AIR passengers and governments in Spain's non-mainland outposts are calling for a 75% reduction on flights and 100% cuts in airport taxes, which they say are 'perfectly affordable' for the government.
At present, residents in the Canary Islands, Balearic Islands and the two Spanish-owned city-provinces of Ceuta and Melilla on the northern Moroccan coast are entitled to a 50% discount on flights to and from the mainland, since generally, they have to reach continental Spain for onward international travel and, in some cases, have to fly there for business or personal reasons.
But regional governments in these four areas are calling for the flight reductions to increase to 75%.
This would cost the government around €130 million per year in total, compared with around €87m at present.
They also want all airport taxes on flights linking the mainland and islands or African continental enclaves to be axed, which would involve a further €71m price tag.
However, the Canary Island regional minister for transport and public works, Pablo Rodríguez, said much of it could be offset by small increases on flight tickets across the board, both for mainland residents travelling to other parts of continental Spain and for those who have to cross a sea to get there.
Along with the Balearic Island regional minister for land, energy and mobility, Marc Pons, plus the regional minister and vice-minister for public works in Ceuta and Melilla respectively, Néstor García and Javier Mateu, have called for a meeting with their national government counterpart Íñigo de la Serna to put forward their proposals.
All four represent different parties – the ministers from Ceuta and Melilla are on the right-wing PP, which is in national government, whilst Pons and Rodríguez are members of the Socialists (PSOE) and Canarian Coalition respectively.
They intend to set up an 'extra-continental regions committee' to work together on the specific needs of non-mainland areas of Spain, and their first formal meeting will be in Melilla in the first or second quarter of 2018.
According to Pons, who will host the first summit – which he calls 'unprecedented' – Spaniards and residents in non-mainland regions 'share transport problems' which their governments want to tackle collectively 'putting aside political values'.
“Our requests are not any kind of privilege – they're about fairness,” he stresses.
Rodríguez says he gets the impression that the central government is likely to view their ideas 'positively'.
According to research by the Canary Island government, the 75% islands-and-enclaves resident flight discount and the axing of airport taxes for flights to and from the mainland would account for between 25% and 66% of the cost of a ticket, but would discourage airlines from increasing their own prices in an attempt to gain State subsidies, meaning that in the long run the actual costs to the government would be marginal.
The photograph shows an Air Nostrum plane, part of national carrier Iberia's inter-regional carrier.
