The draft Canary Islands Sustainable and Intelligent Mobility Strategy, known as EMSICAN, suggests temporary price caps on national flights when demand is at its highest. The aim is to protect both island residents and Canarians living elsewhere in Spain from fares that rise sharply on the dates everyone needs to travel. It has not been approved, and there are no details yet on how a cap would work or which routes it would cover.
Residents of the Canary Islands already get 75 per cent off eligible flights and ferries to and from the mainland. Because the discount is a percentage, though, the amount they pay still goes up whenever the full fare does. The strategy proposes checking base fares before the discount is applied, auditing the algorithms airlines use to set prices, and a price observatory that would publish every six months what residents actually pay on the five busiest routes. It also raises the possibility of public service obligations on some mainland routes, which let authorities set minimum standards for price, frequency and capacity.
The plans cover only national flights, so holidaymakers flying to Lanzarote from the UK, Ireland and the rest of Europe will see no difference. Inter-island flights already have their own maximum fares and are not part of the plan, and ferry trips such as the excursions to Fuerteventura and La Graciosa are unaffected.
