Isla de Tenerife Transportation

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Tenerife is well served by its airports with routes from and to the other Canary Islands, Europe and beyond. There are two airports on the island of Tenerife, one on the north side (Tenerife Norte, TFN) and the other one on the south of the island (Tenerife Sur, TFS). Both airports are at about 2.5 hours flying time from Madrid, and about 3 hours from Barcelona.
Most domestic flights go to Tenerife Norte. Most international and charter flights go to Tenerife Sur. Most people travelling on scheduled flights will have to fly via Madrid or Barcelona. Three airlines fly scheduled flights in from the Spanish mainland: Iberia, Air Europa and Spanair. The strong competition between them has substantially lowered the airfares to the Canaries in the past years. Please book your flights early. Scheduled flights from Madrid and Barcelona to Tenerife as well as charter flights from some European countries can be heavily booked at certain times of the year.

Bus services on Tenerife are operated by TITSA (Transportes Interurbanos de Tenerife SA) and as with most places that we visit, the service that they run is way ahead of what we get here in England and way cheaper too.
They are easily recognised by their green livery and run quite a regular service between the main population & tourist centres. The fully comprehensive timetable is an invaluable tool and its a real advantage to be able to have it before you arrive at the island, so that you can plan your days out. You can download the timetable from here, along with a route map and other useful stuff.
You can buy a ticket called a BonoBus ticket from the bus stations and some shops (these shops are hard to find and its advisable to get one from the bus station if you can) but they are not sold on the busses.
The tickets cost 12 Euro and they get you a price reduction on journeys you make; the longer the journey the greater the reduction. The cost of the journey is deducted from your ticket, so it not only gets you a discount it also counts as a pre-payed ticket. You can use the same ticket for any number of people too, simply put it in the machine in the bus again and again and again, the cost of each trip being deducted until the ticket is empty.
If you make a journey that costs more than the amount you have left on your ticket, you pay the remainder in cash, but you still get it at the discounted price.
Example prices with a BonoBus are Las Americas to Santa Cruz, 2.7 Euro.
Busses run fairly frequently, especially between the more popular destinations, but they often take longer than advertised to a greater or lesser degree. Las Americas to Los Gigantes took us 100 minutes, twice as long as stated.
See my warnings & dangers about getting the 111 bus to destinations towards Santa Cruz!

There are lots of tour companies selling trips around the island, at reasonable prices(can't remember how much as it was 5 years ago). I think we went with Union Jack Travel. Advantages - you don't have to worry about the traffic or hairpin bends, you can drink alcohol with your lunch and meet other people.
Disadvantages-sometimes you are taken to a tourist souvenir shop.

Watch out for the 'free' tours:we never went on one because we knew we wouldn't have had much time to ourselves due to film shows etc.

Trip to La Gomera was brilliant, and I was glad I wasn't driving on those high windy mountain roads.

Yes, TITSA is the name of the bus company on Tenerife, not a typo. It stands for Transportes Interurbanos de Tenerife S.A.

Anyhow, these buses seem to go all the way around the island and almost antwhere you would want to go.

I took the picture of this bus in the Teide National Park (home of the huge volcano), and there were plenty of these buses going backwards and forwards despite the very high altitude and steep mountain roads.

For more information, look at the attcahed website below.

Its unfortunate that the busses in a popular British holiday spot are called `Titsa`, I can just imagine the comments some of my countrymen will make !

the busses are modern and clean and operate regular services all over the island

Tenerife has two Airports, Teneriffa Norte, Los Rodeos Airport and Teneriffa Sur, Reina Sofia Airport.

The busiest one is the south Airport. Most of the flights are Charter flights. It is not easy finding good priced scheduled flights, but there is a wide range of charter flights from all over europe.

We used Iberia (spanish national carrier) and had to change plane in Madrid (scheduled flight). We arrived at the north Airport and departed from the south Airport.

If you book a package holiday (as most tourists on Tenerife) you will probably fly to the south airport and then get collected at the airport.
If you are travelling individualy here some infos:
From both airports there are regular bus services (very reliable!) in most directons (www.titsa.com). Taxis are available too and are cheap and reliable.
There is a wide range of car rental firms at the airports offering their services. Its normaly cheaper to book a car before you arrive. From both airports you get on the motorway and to your destination.

There are plenty of car-rental firms on Tenerife, so doing some window shopping before you buy could save you quite a few bucks. We hired a car through our Thomas Cook rep, who deal with AVIS. We were charged 49 Euros for the day, - and then spent another 15 Euros on petrol driving from the South to the North, and back again. Very economical :)
Some adverts we saw for car rental showed prices as low as 32 Euros a day, though they weren't any company that we knew.

There are 2 buses available to get from Los Christianos/Las Americas to the cliffs of Los Gigantes - number 473 & 477. Now the trick is to take the 477, as it's only an hour long, and quite direct... the 473 is 2 hours long, and takes your through almost every village on the way! It's quite a scenic trip, but only if you have the hour to waste.