Tenerife North Airport (IATA: TFN, ICAO: GCXO), formerly Los Rodeos Airport, is one of the two international airports on the island of Tenerife, Spain. It is located in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, 11 km (6.8 mi) by road from Santa Cruz and at an altitude of 633 metres (2,077 ft). In 1977, the airport was the site of the worst accident in aviation history when 583 passengers and crew were killed after two Boeing 747s collided on the runway in heavy fog. Both planes exploded and started fires, and were completely destroyed.
Tenerife North handled 4,095,103 passengers in 2011. Combined with Tenerife South Airport, the island gathers the highest passenger movement in the Canary Islands with 12,751,583 passengers. The busiest air route from the airport in terms of passengers is the one to Madrid Airport, at over one million passengers a year.
Today TFN is an inter-island hub connecting all seven Canary Islands with connections to the Iberian Peninsula, Europe, and North America. The route between Tenerife North and Madrid-Barajas is the airport's busiest with an average of 40 flights per day.
Read more about Tenerife North Airport: Buildings, History, Airlines and Destinations, Statistics, Accidents and Incidents
Famous quotes containing the words north and/or airport:
“The discovery of the North Pole is one of those realities which could not be avoided. It is the wages which human perseverance pays itself when it thinks that something is taking too long. The world needed a discoverer of the North Pole, and in all areas of social activity, merit was less important here than opportunity.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)
“Airplanes are invariably scheduled to depart at such times as 7:54, 9:21 or 11:37. This extreme specificity has the effect on the novice of instilling in him the twin beliefs that he will be arriving at 10:08, 1:43 or 4:22, and that he should get to the airport on time. These beliefs are not only erroneous but actually unhealthy.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)