Tenerife Los Rodeos- Flying from Europe's Most Infamous Airport!
Tenerife Los Rodeos- now known as Tenerife North is an Airport often forgotten or not heard of by most tourists who fly to the Island on their holidays. Since the opening of Tenerife South in the late 1970s, most tourists from Europe & further afield arrive through that gateway if they fly down on their holidays. Tenerife North mainly handles domestic flights in 2025 to the Spanish Mainland and neighbouring Canary Islands.
For those who know about Aviation History, then Tenerife North (Los Rodeos) is infamous as the site of the Worst Aviation Disaster, this small airport was the site of a collision between two Boeing 747 (flown by KLM & Pan AM) airliners which diverted to the Airport in March 1977, a series of events lead to the two aircraft colliding on the Runway of the Airport resulting in the tragic loss of 583 people. Fortunately the aviation world has not seen a tragedy on this scale in the near 5 decades since the disaster and it lead to one of the biggest shake-ups in commercial aviation safety.
Tenerife North has never been well equipped for the modern jet age, which was part the reason the island constructed the modern Tenerife South, which was under construction when the disaster at Los Rodeos occurred, but the Airport has modernised and maintained itself as a secondary airport to the island.
My short break in Tenerife had me staying in the capital city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which is ideal if you want to fly from Tenerife North as the main bus terminal in the city has a regular direct bus link to Tenerife North Airport, the Bus NO.20 "Aeroexpress". The route takes about 20 minutes to do and runs quite regularly.
I opted to fly this route as I wanted to tick off flying from Tenerife Los Rodeos Airport as an AvGeek, but I also wanted to give Vueling a second chance, I could have flown to Alicante easily with Vueling from Tenerife South, but the chance to fly from Tenerife North & visit the capital city of Tenerife was too good to pass up!
If you want to know what happened on my last trip with Vueling and why I was giving them another chance, here's a link to my last flight with them!
Flight routing
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The terminal at Los Rodeos dates back to the early 1940s, various modernisations have occurred in the 80 years of operations, but it really impressed me as I took the walk around the balcony overlooking departure hall. You clear security at the lower levels for the commuter flights, but once that's done, you follow this walkway past this great view and towards a Duty Free shop which takes you to the Gates that serve the "big jet airliners" operating to the Spanish Mainland… though the main jet aircraft seen at Tenerife Los Rodeos are Airbus A320-family and the occasional Boeing 737-800 from Air Europa & Ryanair.
A flight operated by Spanish charter airline Plus Ultra does serve Caracas in Venezuela, but I don't know if that still runs or how frequently, I believe if it does then Tenerife Los Rodeos has a regular Airbus A330 service, making that the largest aircraft serving the Airport.
My flight was showing which Gate I was due to leave from, so I used the time to go and find somewhere I could get some plane spotting at Tenerife Los Rodeos done, with a nice mix of regional Spanish flights due. Despite the cloudy and rainy day covering the Canary Islands, I checked the weather app to see Alicante was going to be a lot nicer!
My gate had a great view of the runway. I got a nice surprise when I spotted a West Atlantic Boeing 737-800F departing, I wasn't expecting to see that! My Vueling Airbus A320 arrived in from Alicante, meaning the crew & aircraft was going to be an ALC based crew.
Boarding at Gate B-23 began, I didn't have priority so wasn't rushing to board the flight, but it was time to get on another Vueling flight and to see how this experience would go…
Vueling VY3119 (TFN-ALC)
That morning flight would be operated by Vueling Airbus A320ceo, registered as EC-JSY and named "Connie Baraja". This aircraft was built in May 2006 brand new for Vueling who have operated it for its entire 21 years of service making it one of the oldest A320s in service with Vueling at the time of flying.
I couldn't find out any information on who Connie Baraja is, but if you do know- please leave a comment, I assume its someone to do with Vueling rather than a famous Spanish person.
I boarded the Vueling plane to see the infamous seats that are also used on Iberia's A320-family aircraft and some of BA's Airbus A320neo aircraft in the rear half of the cabin. They aren't bad on 1-2 hour flights, but not that brilliant for anything more than 3 hours… I took my Window seat at Seat 25A, aft of the wing. The view appeared to be promising once the rain drops were blown off the plane on take off!
We taxied across to Runway 30, the same Runway position that in 1977 that KLM 4805 began its ill-fated take off roll from… As we started to roll down the soaked runway of the Airport, the rain droplets quickly disappeared off my window allowing for a decent view as the Airbus A320 soared off into the cloudy skies over Tenerife, once we got some height in we broke through the cloud layers and got a decent bit of blue sky for the flight across to Mainland Spain.
We eventually got to our cruising altitude and I began to settle into the nearly 3 hour flight over to Alicante. Once we left the Canary Islands, the weather below began to clear up and I could see the vast North Atlantic below.
The crew began the inflight service offering the Spanish low cost airlines inflight café. I opted for a snack deal of a chocolate waffle with a coffee alongside a porridge, a good inflight breakfast as I hadn't had anything other than a coffee on the whilst in Tenerife as my hotel didn't have a restaurant. I did like the cheesy jokes on the coffee cup and napkin.
Eventually we approached the South-Western edge of Spain, for a few minutes though we did fly over British Airspace on this Spanish domestic flight as we passed over the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, a place I've been to twice and it was nice to see it from above during a patch of clear weather!
As we began to fly over mainland Spain I quickly visited the toilet, and got a picture of it for the report article. It was quite a spacious airplane loo as I was on an older Airbus A320, compare to the tight squeezes you get on more modern Airbus A320ceo or Airbus A320neo!
Flying along towards Alicante, we were graced by some nice views of the mountainous regions of rural Spain away from the major cities & towns. A few areas had heavier cloud cover, some other places were almost clear skies.
Eventually the last hour of the flight passed and we commenced our arrival into Alicante Airport. We taxied over to the Schengen Area, passing various UK & Irish flights parked in the non-Schengen zone, including a rare Boeing 737-300 of Jet2! I spotted an Iberia CRJ-1000 parked on a remote stand ahead of some Ryanair Boeing 737-800.
We parked up, and I opted to hold back and be one of the last off so I could get another cabin shot before leaving the Vueling A320. We arrived on time which was great as I fancied a good look around Alicante city centre as it was a new Spanish destination for me & I had only 24 hours in Alicante before heading off on another new airline for me!
I arrived and followed the arrivals signs to baggage reclaim, given it was the start of the holidays for Easter in Europe as well as the start of the Summer Timetable, I was glad to be arriving on a domestic flight and not needing to go through passport control, but as I left I found an arrival board showing the next few hours of arrivals and there was a huge surge of budget airlines from the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, Germany and Italy all inbound for Alicante, even a cheeky sole flight from North Africa was due in!
Overall I was happy with this Vueling flight, a much better experience than the previous flight I had from Bilbao to London. The "ironing board" seats held up for this 3 hour flight despite my worries I'd go numb bellow my waistline! I would be happy to fly Vueling again in the future, especially as they can offer some amazingly cheap flights domestically within Spain!
