Los Rodeos airport for and from the north of Tenerife in the Canary Islands

There are two international airports in Tenerife and the one for the north is known as Los Rodeos Aiport. It is also called Tenerife North Airport, or Tenerife Norte, commonly abbreviated to TFN on websites and by travel firms.

It is very near to the university city of La Laguna and only 11 km from the busy capital of Santa Cruz.

Los Rodeos provides flights to the other Canary Islands, as well as mainland Spain, and has also served destinations in Europe and South America. It used to have flights to and from the UK but these have been stopped in recent years and all planes from Britain now go to the south of the island.

Los Rodeos has a large parking area for cars and has motorway access ramps. It is a four-story terminal building and has 12 gates. Fortunately for travellers, Los Rodeos is on several TITSA bus routes and the stops for these services are can be found outside the main entrance to the airport.

The TITSA bus number 340 takes passengers all the way from the northern resort of Puerto de la Cruz to Reina Sofía Airport in the south of Tenerife. It calls in at Los Rodeos and, in so doing, provides a vital link between the two airports.

Bus number 102 from Santa Cruz to Puerto de la Cruz, service number 106 from Santa Cruz to Icod de los Vinos, the 107 that goes from Santa Cruz to Buenavista del Norte, as well as the 108 from Santa Cruz to Icod de los Vinos, all stop at Los Rodeos.

Los Rodeos came into its own as a fully operational international airport when a new terminal was created back in 2002. Flights were started then that went to Caracas in Venezuela, and additional planes that flew between the neighbouring Canary Islands and Tenerife began operating in 2005.

The busiest flight route has been to the neighbouring Canary Island of Gran Canaria. Binter Canarias operates flights to the other islands of Lanzarote, El Hierro, Fuerteventura, La Gomera, La Palma and Gran Canaria.

Los Rodeos really started life much earlier on though when back in the winter of 1929, when although the airport had not yet even been built, the field where it was later to stand was got ready for an unofficial flight to Tenerife by an Arado VI (D-1594) plane from Berlin for the German Deutsche Lufthansa.

Later on in May 1930, the Compañía de Líneas Aéreas Subvencionadas S.A. launched the first link by air between the Spanish mainland and the Canary Islands with a flight from Madrid to the airfield that was to become Los Rodeos Airport.

It seemed clear that one day Los Rodeos would become a fully functioning airport in the fairly near future, and the money needed to fund its development was raised between 1935 and 1939.

In July 1936, General Franco boarded a plane from Los Rodeos after taking over Tenerife, and he went on to start the Spanish civil war.

Fast forward to the 23rd of January 1941 when there was an Iberia flight that was flown from Gando military airport in Gran Canaria.

By 1946, hangars, a passenger terminal and an 800m paved runway had been built at Los Rodeos Airport, and with all this development it started handling both national and international air traffic.

By 1953, Los Rodeos had runway edge lighting as well as an air-ground radio facility, which meant that from that time on it was possible for planes to land at the airport and depart at night.

Many years later in 1971, the runway for the airport was reinforced, but then in 1977, tragedy occurred on the 27 March when a PanAm and a KLM Boeing 747 collided. 583 people were killed in what was reported as the worst accident that had ever taken place in the history of aviation.

However, all of that past history, both good and bad, is behind the modern Los Rodeos as it is today.

Los Rodeos is very different to its southern counterpart of Reina Sofía because whilst the latter looks out on the semi-desert barren countryside above El Médano, the airport for Tenerife North is surrounded by green forested mountains and fields.