The Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda of the Government of Spain, Raquel Sánchez, together with the President of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, have inaugurated the expansion of the Tenerife Sur airport terminal building, a renovation that will guarantee “sustainable, safe and accessible”, as stated by the minister. This reform, which now connects terminals 1 and 2, has involved an investment of 64 million euros, which has given rise to 50,000 new and usable square meters for carrying out security checks and baggage check-in. With this, the airport will go from being able to accommodate a total of 12 million passengers a year to 16 million.
Within the construction, not only has the increase in the external passenger transit area been contemplated, but also the pavements of the runway and the aircraft platform have been renewed, and new equipment has been designed for the storage of belongings of the users.
The work is part of the investment planned by Aena for the island’s airports, a plan that has had an investment of 160 million euros between the 2017-2021 period, which provides for the improvement and creation of other terminals throughout the territory Tenerife.
Sánchez pointed out that this action is going to have an “obvious impact on Tenerife and the whole of the Archipelago” and recalled that airports must be at the same level as tourism, because “mobility is a right for citizens, and from the Government we are responsible for guaranteeing it”.
Tourism represents 14.3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the Spanish territory, assuming an investment of 119,000 million euros.
In the case of the Canary Islands, the investment “gains even more relevance”, in the opinion of the minister, for which she has stated that also, linked to the need to give importance to inter-island connections and also with the peninsular territory, they have increased the discounts to the transport of the residents in the Islands.
Compared to 2020, this area has reached an increase of 37%, with 514 million to cover 75% of the cost of tickets both by air and by sea.
In addition to this, Sánchez has also indicated that the number of trips connecting Huelva with Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has grown, while improving their quality.
All these actions have been carried out to “guarantee connectivity and contact between people and territories” and to relaunch the economy of the islands after the pandemic, according to the minister.
For his part, the president of the Canary Islands has considered that it is a “historical extension of great importance”. Torres has announced that a complementary project to the one they have presented has been approved, which contemplates the future comprehensive reform of the Tenerife Sur Airport, which will lead to a complete remodeling of the interior and exterior of the place.
The action already has an agreement signed with Aena, endowed with an initial budget of eight million euros, which stipulates that the work could be completed, initially, by the next year 2026.
