Tenerife South Airport (Spanish: Aeropuerto de Tenerife Sur) (IATA: TFS, ICAO: GCTS), previously known as Tenerife South-Reina Sofia Airport, is the larger of the two international airports located on the island of Tenerife (the other being Tenerife North Airport) and the second busiest in the Canary Islands. It is located in the municipality of Granadilla de Abona and handled over 9 million passengers in 2014.
In the late 1960s, the island authorities of Tenerife Identified the need for a new airport at a new location as the existing airport did not meet technical requirements due to adverse weather conditions.
The new airport was inaugurated on 6 November 1978, by Queen Sofía of Spain, to whom the airport is dedicated. The first flight was Iberia flight IB187 from Lanzarote, which was operated by a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 landing at 10:17.[3] By the end of its first year, 1 million passengers had passed through its doors.
The airport was under construction when the Tenerife airport disaster occurred at Tenerife North Airport in March 1977.
Tenerife South consists of one three-storey passenger terminal in a classic brick style. The main level, Floor 0, contains all check-in and service counters, the departures waiting areas as well as the arrivals and main baggage reclaim. The departures area features 34 boarding gates of which eight are equipped with jetbridges. While the upper floor 1 contains office space and transit corridors, the basement level -1 features additional luggage belts.[