Lanzarote airport delays: 2,225 minutes since 4 November

What changes now for passengers on Lanzarote?

Expect delays if you fly from Lanzarote: they have piled up at César Manrique-Lanzarote airport since the night of 4 November. The trigger is a labour dispute between the controllers at the private operator Saerco and their company management.

Eurocontrol data show only two European airports with serious delays at present: Athens, for local reasons, and Lanzarote. For Lanzarote, Eurocontrol counts 2,225 minutes of accumulated delay from controller strikes, about 5% of delays in the European network.

The ADAC advises travellers to check their flight status and arrive at the airport earlier. Your airline and AENA (the Spanish airport operator) give the current picture.

No statement from Saerco, AENA, ENAIRE or the Cabildo (island government) had been published by Friday 6 November. There are also no figures on affected flights, cancellations or delay hours per day, and nobody names a period for the 2,225 minutes.

Why are the delays only appearing now?

The strike has run indefinitely since 17 April 2026, yet passengers noticed little for a long time. The unions called it an “invisible strike” because minimum services required almost all available controllers to work.

For Lanzarote, the Transport Ministry set minimum services of 76% for inter-island flights in October and 73% in November. For mainland and international routes of more than five hours, the figures are 57% in October and 53% in November.

The winter timetable changes the picture, says Susana Romero, national spokesperson for the controllers' union USCA. In winter two controllers are more often on shift, and one of them can exercise the right to strike.

USCA accuses Saerco of an “abusive interpretation of the rule” to protect the whole operation. The unions see the right to strike as violated and have taken the minimum-service orders to court, but nobody names the court or a hearing date.

Who is striking, and what do the controllers want?

USCA (the air traffic controllers' union) and CCOO called the strike. It covers the private operator Saerco, which the unions say runs nine towers.

According to Romero, the unions are not demanding a pay rise. They want enough staff in every tower, respect for rest periods, an end to excessive on-call summons and guaranteed holidays.

The Lanzarote tower works with 14 active controllers, says the strike committee, while 22 are technically needed. Romero also reports towers where a single controller works an eight-hour shift.

USCA and CCOO call for a full review of the privatisation. If Saerco does not guarantee stable staffing, they want to ask the government to revoke the contracts and hand the towers back to the state operator ENAIRE.

On 29 September an aircraft taxied onto the runway at Lanzarote without clearance. USCA blames a crew error and sees no link to the strike.

What rights do passengers have if a flight is cancelled?

If your flight is cancelled, you can choose between a refund and a replacement journey (Article 8 of EU Regulation 261/2004), say the consumer groups FACUA and OCU. The airline must also provide meals and drinks, and a hotel and transfer if needed (Article 9), according to FACUA and OCU.

The ADAC also names meals and accommodation. OCU says extra compensation can reach 600 euros, depending on distance and the replacement flight offered.

In April, FACUA asked the Transport Ministry to monitor compliance with the minimum services. No information is available on claims for simple delays without a cancellation.

How does this compare with the past, and what happens next?

Lanzarote already topped the delay list during a strike at the privatised towers in 2023. Reports at the time named it the European airport with the longest delays on 27 July, 3 August and 17 August 2023.

That strike began with stoppages on Mondays from 30 January to 27 February 2023 and was extended monthly for about a year. The unions demanded 30% more pay, and by 21 August 2023 Saerco had offered six percent over three years.

Back then the Cabildo and the chamber of commerce asked Saerco for an urgent meeting. The operator Skyway reached agreement with its controllers, but Saerco accepts nothing, says USCA.

Lanzarote airport handled 8,920,901 passengers in 2025, up 2.4% on the previous year, according to AENA. That makes it the third largest in the Canaries, covering about 16.3% of all Canary Islands passengers.

Nobody yet knows when the strike will end. By Friday 6 November, nobody had named a new mediation date or a court date either.