Return to the Islands for Christmas, five times more expensive than a week before

Round trip Madrid-Gran Canaria. Departure on December 23 from the capital of Spain and return on Monday 26, declared a holiday in both autonomous communities. Without residence, 230 euros; if the family is four members, 920 euros. The same example with arrival to the Islands on December 16 and return on December 19: 81 euros per person. Seven days are enough for the cost of the trip to be multiplied by 5.7.

And this a month away. As the arrival of Santa Claus approaches, there will be fewer seats available, so they will be more expensive. “It’s impossible, I have to stay,” laments Miguel Díaz, president -pending formalization- of the Canaries without Wings Association, collective that for six years has exposed the same complaint without anything having changed.

in such a way that Family reunions fell out of the initial enumeration, pushed by the difficulty to get a place. Even more so in the current context of inflation that reduces the purchasing power of citizens. Furthermore, taking into account that the chosen example is not one of the most dramatic. The connections of a capital island with Madrid are abundant, so that the pressure of the demand is felt later than on routes in which a smaller number of frequencies are programmed.

Barcelona-Tenerife, worse

You don’t have to dig too far either. The displacement on those same dates – going on December 16 and returning on December 23 – between Barcelona and Tenerife means a non-resident disbursement of 431 euros. This amount is the same as that resulting from multiplying by 8.8 the 49 euros for which you could make that same trip in the immediately preceding week.

Given this exponential increase in ticket prices, Miguel Díaz wonders “in what world do they live” who assure him that prices “are contained” and that there is an observatory from where they are monitored. As a possibility, he points out that perhaps these interlocutors inhabit a universe “in which only the elite, a few, can travel when they want” while the others have to stay away from their own.

Nothing has changed in the last six years. Prices skyrocket automatically on these and other designated dates each year and Canarios sin Alas demands that all routes between the Peninsula be declared OSP (public service obligation) and maximum prices be set.

The liberal current maintains that the solution lies in more market or, what is the same, the promotion of the arrival of more airlines to these routes so that prices lose weight in direct proportion to the fattening of the offer. Díaz does not trust the effect of that recipe.