Reina Sofia Airport Tenerife - Spain

As mentioned in my previous review I spent the week in Tenerife recently. As with many people I flew to the southern airport.

Since this is a newer building designed to carry large numbers of international passengers whereas the airport in the North was desgined for fewer passengers, it should preform this function very well.

Your first view of the airport is likely to be as you come in to land, you will see a long low ...
...the motorway beyond it.

As you land its worth noting that the landing is likely to be noisy and quite rough as the run way is quite short meaning your pilot needs to slam the brakes on as soon as you touch down.

Once landed you will either disembark the plane via the airbridges direct in to the terminal building or via steps and then bussed up to the terminal. Either way I have never been on the plane longer than 10 ... more

As mentioned in my previous review I spent the week in Tenerife recently. As with many people I flew to the southern airport.

Since this is a newer building designed to carry large numbers of international passengers whereas the airport in the North was desgined for fewer passengers, it should preform this function very well.

Your first view of the airport is likely to be as you come in to land, you will see a long low building which runs parrellel to the runway with carparks and the motorway beyond it.

As you land its worth noting that the landing is likely to be noisy and quite rough as the run way is quite short meaning your pilot needs to slam the brakes on as soon as you touch down.

Once landed you will either disembark the plane via the airbridges direct in to the terminal building or via steps and then bussed up to the terminal. Either way I have never been on the plane longer than 10 minutes after touching down. Once in the terminal you follow a clear 'channel' around to the Passport control point, but I tend to feel somewhat gawped at while walking this channel since it is set around 6ft lower than the departure lounge with only a glass barrier separating the two. But looking the other way you can see the airfield and then beyond it the coast.

At passport control again you will be fairly rapidly through the channels, usually at a British planes landing there are two Officers in the booths checking but when I flew from Amsterdam there was only one so getting through took proportionally longer.

The baggage reclaim area is large and there are plenty of trolleys avaliable, above each are screens telling you where your luggage is to be found. My experiences of baggage waits seems to differ depending on the carrier I flew in on generally Monarch and BA are the quickest with others taking much longer but since these are the more 'premium' carriers I wouldnt expect them to be too slow.

As far as the Customs channel goes theres a desk there, usually theres someone there but I've never come across anyone being stopped and it appears to be a meeting point for off duty staff. The area beyond tends to be overrun with holiday reps collecting their customers since I tend to fly in and meet friends I couldnt comment on how to find transfer coaches etc but I would imagine its a pretty standard process, as the coach park is right outside the door, and there is a large taxi rank which always seems to have plenty of taxi's avaliable.

On your return to the airport to leave again there are plenty of check in desks and they are clearly labelled for which airline all with in my experience at least friendly english or english speaking staff.

To get through to the departure lounge is not quite such a simple process since you have to go upstairs, to the security scanners, this is an area very well organised in comparison to the chaos at Manchester. You first come to a row of tables where you are told to put any belts, change or loose objects in to the trays provided before being directed to the shortest scanner que. Once through the scanners you need to take your belongings through a partition screen where there are another row of tables for you to put your stuff away again. Its my opinion that this three stage process is what makes it quicker than Manchester where you dont start to think about moving belts/stuff until you are stood at the scanner thus slowing more prepared people down.

At this point there is a large cafe/coffee shop and signs sending you back to the lower level where the gates and most of the shops are. In years passed I found that most of the shops were either closed when I was there even during the day or had nothing interesting in them, currently however the lounge is being redeveloped so there are large areas boarded up, but there are now two bars at either end of the lounge (beaware that the length of the building means its a fair walk if you happen to be drinking in one but your gate is at the other end) whos prices are similar but one is more a pub style while the other is brighter and sells sarnies and cakes. There is also a fairly new food court area which has a few shops open around it, but theyre the usual music shop, Durty Free and Sweetshop. Other shops are due to reopen before next summer.

If shopping isnt your thing there is loads of seating around the gates so you can just sit and relax - something I think Manchester could do with improving on since you are almost forced to shop until you know which gate to head for because of the layout of the place.

Once your flight is called again they are quick to get you through and on to the plane, the airbridges are quite short and only ever reach the front of the plane, although on occasion you get bussed out to the plane which obviously takes slightly longer.

So far as take off is concerned it happens generally fairly soon after the plane doors shut as they dont have the volume of traffic you see at some airports and have little holding space once you are away from your gate.

Since the layout of the airport is over several levels it is worth noting that if you have impaired mobility you need to tell the airline, but there are lifts and escalators all over the building so you shouldnt have any trouble getting about once you are there. Also once the redeveloped shopping area is opened it could easily rival most bigger airports for quality of shopping (possibly even surpassing them since it wont have the same quantity of rubbish filling the gaps).

At the same time as flying isnt the most pleasant part of the holiday this isnt the greatest airport but it serves its function perfectly well, with staff who manage to get your bags to you quickly and minus the waiting you can experience at so many points maybe due to less traffic or better organisation but it does make it a better experience than it has become in the UK. 

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