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The Canary Island region includes a terminal control area (TCA) and eight airports: Tenerife Norte, Tenerife Sur, Gran Canaria, La Gomera, El Hierro, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and La Palma.

The main characteristics of the region is that it is the gateway, in terms of air traffic, to South America over the Atlantic: the EUR-SAM corridor. Due to its location, it must be crossed by all transit circulating between Europe and South America, as well as part of the traffic going to the Caribbean and Central America. This traffic involves around eleven percent of the total transit controlled by the Canary Island region.

However, the greatest flow of traffic in the Canary Islands - sixty percent of the total - comes from the inflows to the islands from Europe and from the outflows from the islands to the old continent. Lastly, inter-island traffic occupies thirty percent and covers the different routes established in the terminal control area (TCA) linking all of the aerodromes in the Archipelago.

Canary Islands Control Centre

The Canary Island Control Centre (ACC), located on the premises of Gran Canaria airport, manages all of the Canary Island FIR traffic, except for that delegated to the approach facility (APP) –in Gran Canaria, Tenerife Norte and Tenerife Sur– and that of the control towers.

Within this ACC, is the Flow Management Positioning (FMP) that, in permanent contact with the data processing facility and Central Flow Management Unit (CFMU) in Brussels, is responsible for coordinating the flow of arrival and departure traffic to and from the Canary Islands. Thus, the capacity of the different sectors is not saturated and assistance is given in maintaining the safe and orderly flow of air traffic.