Canary Islands – How to get there, about long and longer trips

It is very easy to get to the Canary Islands, mainly in high season: numerous charters and Ryanair give a good choice of connections. We found a flight to Fuerteventura in September, by charter through one of the Polish travel agencies in a last minute offer.

In addition, we bought a flight between Fuerteventura and Tenerife having a safe 5 hours for a connecting flight, but it turns out that sometimes even 5 hours is not enough…. ;) But in turn…

How to fly to the Canary Islands cheaply?

This, in fact, should not be a major problem. Thanks to the numerous Ryanair flights, tickets to the Canaries can be bought for as little as PLN 600 round trip (+ baggage fee). Also flying in large numbers are charters from Polish travel agencies. In the normal offer, tickets start at around £900 round trip (here already with luggage). You can catch them for as low as $600 in last minute deals about a month in advance. On top of that, there are various and sundry promotions….

Attention! Different companies fly on charters (Enter Air, Travel Service), for different travel agencies (TUI, Neckermann…), from different cities in Poland. Even if you are interested in a particular flight, compare it on several travel agency websites. Prices can vary widely from one to another, despite being sold for the same flight, under the same conditions.

These charters fly to virtually every one of the Canary Islands, including, of course, Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura.

Flights between the Canary Islands

Our destination was Tenerife. Unfortunately, we missed out on a last-minute promotion to Tenerife from Warsaw. Nothing lost! Between the islands fly the airline Binter Canarias, which, for example, flies between Gran Canaria and Tenerife practically every hour.

Prices? Quite affordable. Buying last minute to Fuerteventura (on a similar date) + Binter Canarias flight to Tenerife, we paid a similar price if we had to buy an advance ticket to Tenerife. Compare prices directly on Binter’s website, but also on Polish flight search engines. This saved us a few extra pennies + in the price we had the opportunity to rebook (yes, there is such a word in Polish ;)) the ticket for free, which, as it turned out, was very helpful for us.

The Binter Canarias airline itself is more than worthy of recommendation. Small planes, but with plenty of legroom and MEGA comfortable seats. Despite the short flights, they always hand out newspapers, drinks, snacks, wet and warm towels…. And that’s included in the price! It may be a bit noisy during takeoff (thanks to the propellers on the wings), but the trip is made more pleasant by the local music coming from the speakers ;)

Flights between the islands are definitely more comfortable than, for example, ferries. Flights don’t last more than an hour… the alternative ferry can even go all day! Not to mention ferry prices, which can be even more than a plane ticket.

Long trip thanks to Enter Air…

Our trip to the Canary Islands did not start very happily: there were considerable delays at Warsaw’s Okecie Airport due to fog. Our plane, which was supposed to take us to Fuerteventura, waited in Lodz until the weather conditions improved, and eventually we didn’t leave Warsaw until after 1 p.m. (the flight was scheduled to depart at 7 a.m…).

Another point is that conditions at Okhotsk improved much earlier. Enter Air (the operator of this flight) despite the long wait did not inform us about the situation, food (which we were entitled to) handed over only after strong pressure from the waiting, generally a massacre! Nothing is written about the compensation from which Enter Air is also shirking…. In a word, watch out for this line.

Generally, the delay meant that we would miss our second flight from Fuerteventura to Tenerife, and we might not be able to pick up the rental car in time (even though we had assumed a safe 5 hours for our connecting flight!). While still in Poland, we tried to re-arrange a transfer or find an alternative way to get to the other island – we also considered arriving by ferry ;) As it was Sunday, some offices were closed and we did not manage to find out anything specific.

Finally, when we landed in Fuerteventura we rushed to the Binter office where we managed to “rebook” a ticket for a later flight :) Unfortunately, also this flight was delayed, but only an hour, so it didn’t make much of an impression on us ;) Anyway, the nice seats wiped out all the fatigue and stress ;)

After less than an hour flight, we again rushed to pick up the car (we managed to reach the Avis office 5min before closing). Only later did we pick up our luggage.

Fortunately, everything somehow worked out and around 11 pm we arrived at the hotel (without a GPS, which could not catch the signal and with a woman doing the GPS, but we made it ;) ).

It was an adventurous day so we fell right away…. :)