The airport is served mainly by Binter Canarias and CanaryFly with island-hopping flights from Tenerife and Gran Canaria, but there are flights to the main Europe cities and charter flights from mainland Europe such as Germany, United Kingdom, Scandinavia and the Netherlands. In 2018, the airport had 1,420,277 passengers in the 22,033 operations handled. Cargo traffic totalled 565 tonnes.[4]
History
Former control tower of the old airport
On February 19, 1921, the then company Marítimo Canaria received authorization from the Ministry of Transport to establish an air service on the coast of Tazacorte. In the early 1950s, plans were made for a new airfield. However, the choice of location was difficult, since the island of La Palma is very mountainous and offers little flat land near the capital. So it was decided to build the airfield called Buenavista de Arriba, also known as Buena Vista, about three kilometers west of the island's capital, Santa Cruz, at an elevation of 350 meters. This airfield was opened on September 22, 1955 for civil aviation and the first tourist flights. In 1958, the runway 03/21, about 1000 meters long, received an asphalt surface. Aircraft of the type Junkers Ju 52/3m and Douglas DC-3 operated there. The former runway and control tower as well as the airport terminal building, which has since been converted into a private house, still exist today.
As Buenavista Airport was not sustainable in the long term due to difficult wind and weather conditions, a new airport was opened near Mazo, about eight kilometers south of Santa Cruz, on April 15, 1970. Due to the large volume of traffic, the runway was later extended by about 500 meters to the north. It was completed on April 1, 1980, and has remained unchanged to this day.
However, the airport's location is also susceptible to dangerous winds - during rare westerly wind conditions, downdrafts from the mountain slopes can occur several times a year, during which air traffic has to be partially or completely shut down. In one of the longest incidents of this kind, between April 6 and 10, 2008, about three quarters of all flight movements were cancelled, and the airport had to be completely closed temporarily. Many charter flights were diverted to Tenerife South Airport. More than 1,500 passengers had to use ferry connections or stay on Tenerife or one of the other islands.
In 2021, the airport was affected by the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano. Due to volcanic ash on the airport grounds, operations had to be completely shut down for a time.
New terminal
Terminal interiorAirport overview
A new terminal building opened in July 2011, giving the airport an ultimate capacity of 3 million passengers per year. The new terminal has 25 check-in desks, 4 baggage carousels, and 9 boarding gates. The new terminal is farther back than the old terminal, meaning that apron space is maximised. There are still no plans to build a taxiway parallel to the runway, so aircraft still have to backtaxi on the runway, limiting capacity to 10 operations per hour. The airport also has a new control tower.[5]
Airlines and destinations
The following airlines operate regular scheduled and charter flights at La Palma Airport:
^Some infrastructural data are from an old AENA website page that is no longer available. General airport information from AENA as of 2015 is here: La Palma Airport SPC 2015
