Airlines offer over 1 million extra seats for the Canaries this summer

Airline compaines have scheduled more than 1.1 million extra seats for the Canary Islands between April and August this year (2011). Tenerife is leading the increase, given that companies have reserved 3.6 million seats (mostly to the Reina Sofia airport in the south), this is 400,000 more seats than in 2010. Gran Canaria ranks second place with 2.7 million seats (230,000 more than last summer, a growth of 9.4%) followed by Lanzarote, with 1.7 million (200,000 new seats, an increase of 13%), Fuerteventura, with 1.5 million (242 more, 19%), and La Palma, with about 116,000 seats (7,900 additional compared to 2010, a difference of 7.3%). The airlines will offer a total of 12.5 million seats, compared to 11.4 million in 2010. In keeping with the cautious optimism that the authorities are transmitting, the head of the regional government, Paulino Rivero, predicted that the Canary Islands will close 2011 with 12 million tourists visiting the islands.