The Role of Inter-Island Air Transport in the Canary Islands
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Journal of Transport Geography 12 (2004) 235–244 www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo The role of inter-island air transport in the Canary Islands Jose Angel Hernandez Luis * Departamento de Geografia, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University, Gran Canaria, Canary Islands 35003, Spain Abstract The Canary Islands depend almost completely on air transport for the inter-island distances usually exceeding 80–100 miles. 1 Apart from the transport of heavy cargo and that of low unit value by sea transport, the rest of the traffic tends to choose this means. What is more, tourism is developing in the main island and is highly dependent on air transport. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the quality of regular inter-island air transport in the Canary Islands, and how this is incorporated into the Trans-Insular Transport Axis as a social and economic integrating factor. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Air transport; Accessibility; Trans-Insular Transport Axis; Trans-European Transport Networks 1. Introduction less important as this is used extensively for work, business, health, and other trips. Regular air traffic, This article deals with the important role scheduled especially that carried out between islands, is prone to air transport plays for the Canary Islands and its role in changes in timetable, availability of seats on certain days an economy that is highly dependent on tourism. It is and at certain times and there needs to be a minimum true that over 90% of tourists access the Islands on non- amount of time available at destinations in order to al- scheduled flights that are chartered by tour operators low for the return trip on the same day. These quality from abroad. However, when the tourists are on the factors affect the socioeconomic development of the Islands they also use regular interior air transport. At islands. The idea of the Trans-European Transport Net- the same time, the increase in economic activity has work is to help the integration of the economies of the stimulated an increase in inter-island traffic and with the countries in the European Union, and to improve Iberian Peninsula. This traffic has reached levels of over accessibility for their citizens, especially in the peripheral 2.2 million inter-island passengers and 4.7 million with regions (Coccossis and Nijkamp, 1995). the rest of Spain, in 2002. 2 The Trans-European Transport Network concentrates Although non-regular (charter) air traffic is significant on infrastructures, with 14 priority projects among for the Canary Islands regular (scheduled) traffic is no which the high-speed trains are noteworthy. However, the Canary Islands do not directly benefit. Therefore, in 1998 the Canary Island government developed a Plan called the Trans-Insular Transport Axis. This is to pro- * Tel.: +34-28-451700/732/2789; fax: +34-28-451701/2775. mote the development of port and airport infrastructure E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] to improve connections with other islands and eventu- (J.A. Hernandez Luis). ally with the Trans-European Network (Canary Island 1 However, for shorter distances of 50–60 miles, high-speed sea transport begins to compete with air transport (Tenerife–Gran Government, 1998a,b: Gobierno de Canarias, 1998a,b). Canaria; Tenerife–La Gomera; or Lanzarote–Fuerteventura). In this way the Trans-Insular Transport Axis is a sub- 2 Air traffic in and out of the Canary Islands from abroad rose to 23 sidiary of the Trans-European Network. Improvement million in the year 2002. Total air traffic (incoming plus outgoing and of infrastructure contributes to raising the quality of counting ‘‘regular’’ as well as ‘‘non-regular’’), rose to 29.9 million transport, even though the quality of service will depend passengers. From this last amount, 38% come in or leave from the Island of Tenerife; 31% from Gran Canaria; 16% from Lanzarote; 12% ultimately on the transport companies themselves. It is from Fuerteventura; and the other 3% from La Palma, El Hierro & La therefore the aim of this article to evaluate the quality of Gomera, tourism being far less important for these last three islands. the Canary air transport, mainly interinsular, where it is 0966-6923/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2004.04.005 236 J.A. Hernandez Luis / Journal of Transport Geography 12 (2004) 235–244 Table 1 Population and economic characteristics of the Canary Islands between 1960 and 2001 Years Population Foreign tourists Occupations Gross Added Value (in thousands constants euros, 2001) Sector 1a Sector 2a Sector 3a Sector 1a Sector 2a Sector 3a 1960 966,177 69,000 185,025 47,798 113,010 878,938 387,521 1487,697 1970 1125,442 821,000 127,716 90,174 192,205 963,050 966,668 4271,694 1981 1367,669 2521,500 87,275 93,785 276,583 846,357 2810,982 8301,708 1991 1493,784 5495,000 44,133 96,753 356,168 838,376 3601,986 13230,019 1996 1606,549 8007,118 42,386 91,268 389,295 812,208 3525,297 16065,112 2001 1781,366 10137,202 39,160 109,661 488,370 865,247 3844,109 17192,162 Variation 84.4% 14,591.6% )78.8% 129.4% 332.1% )1.6% 892.0% 1,055.7% 1960–2001 Source: Instituto Canario de Estadıstica and Renta Nacional de Espana~ y su distribucion provincial, BBVA. a Sector 1: agriculture, cattle ranching and fishing; Sector 2: industry and construction; Sector 3: services. a fundamental factor in the social and economic inte- Table 2 gration of the Islands. Population, tourism and economic performance of the Canary Islands in 2001 Islands Population Foreign tourists Gross Added Value (%) 2. Brief socio-economic panorama in the Canary Islands Gran Canaria 755,489 3058,759 42 Tenerife 744,076 3811,990 42 The Canary Islands have nearly doubled their popu- Lanzarote 103,044 1791,722 6 lation over the last 40 years and in 2001 they recorded 1.8 La Palma 84,319 133,412 4 million inhabitants (2.1 million including the tourist Fuerteventura 66,025 1341,319 5 population that comes and goes to and from the Archi- La Gomera 18,990 – 0.5 El Hierro 9,423 – 0.5 pelago). This fact, together with the move of the active population from the primary to the tertiary sector, has Total 1781,366 10137,202 100 generated a very large increase in interinsular mobility as Source: Instituto Canario de Estadıstica. well as with the rest of Spain and Europe over the last few years. The financial dependence the islands have on tourism conditioning factor for air transport. Even so, it is also is very high. Although it is not possible to say that all true that some islands, such as La Gomera or El Hierro, tertiary activity depends on it, it is true that tourism has require minimum service levels that are not justified by an important influence not only in the tertiary sector commercial demand. This is where public service obli- but also in others. An example would be the con- gation takes on particular significance. 3 struction industry within the secondary sector. In any Table 2 shows the imbalance between islands and this case, the tertiary activity currently generates 78% of the affects the demand for airborne transport. In fact, Gross Added Value and without doubt, has contributed Tenerife and Gran Canaria contain 84% of the popu- to the increase in the income per capita. In fact, lation and the Gross Added Value. The other 16% is whereas in 1960 the Gross Added Value per capita per distributed unevenly with 14% of the population found year was 2850 Euro (constant from the year 2000) in on the islands of Lanzarote, La Palma and Fuerteven- 2001 this figure had already multiplied by over four tura, and the other 2% is on La Gomera & El Hierro. times to 12,295 Euro on average for each resident on The Gross Added Value does not differ very much from the islands. All these factors have stimulated air trans- these values. Whereas the economy of the island of La port growth amongst the islands in the last 40 years Palma depends heavily on agriculture for export, spe- (Table 1). cifically bananas, the islands of Lanzarote and Fuer- The distribution of the population and wealth within teventura specialise in tourism. the archipelago varies considerably. Multiple parame- ters affect these: from historical reasons to geo-physical conditions, the development of port infrastructures, and so on. This unequal distribution has significant conse- 3 In Resolution of the 30th July 1998 of the Secretarıa de Estado de quences for external transport connections. The demand Infraestructuras y Transportes, 13 interinsular air routes were declared for air transport services differs sharply among the is- as being under public service obligation, each one with minimum lands and therefore, the hinterland of each island is a conditions related to frequency, seats available and timetable. J.A. Hernandez Luis / Journal of Transport Geography 12 (2004) 235–244 237 Table 3 gent goods. However, over the last few decades maritime Ratio of interinsular trips to population for each island in 2001 technology has improved greatly with the introduction Islands Air passengers/ Sea passengers/ Total of fast ferries, jet-foils and hydro-foils, that have man- inhab. inhab. aged to get a market share in key archipelagos (VV. La Gomera 0.58 33.28 33.86 AA., 2001), as in the case of interinsular transport in the Fuerteventura 3.75 10.13 13.88 Canary Islands. 4 However, this experience has shown El Hierro 6.87 6.56 13.43 Lanzarote 2.92 4.76 7.68 that instead of competition between the two means of La Palma 2.96 1.19 4.15 transport, a completely new market has been created Tenerife 0.88 2.04 2.92 (Hernandez Luis, 2002).