Toronto/Montreal — direct to Tenerife

Air Canada is opening a route that usually forces North American travelers to change planes in Madrid, Lisbon, or London: nonstop flights from Toronto and Montreal to Tenerife South, the main airport on Spain’s largest Canary Island. The airline says Toronto starts on October 25, 2026, and Montreal follows on October 31, 2026. (aircanada.com) Those flights are not year-round. Air Canada filed them as winter seasonal service, with Toronto operating twice a week and Montreal once a week during the 2026 to 2027 winter schedule. (aircanada.com) The unusual part is not just the destination but the map. Air Canada says these will be the only nonstop flights between North America and the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa. (aircanada.com) Tenerife sits far enough from Canada that older narrow-body jets were a bad fit, but Air Canada plans to use the Airbus A321 Extra Long Range, a single-aisle aircraft built for thinner long-haul routes. Airbus lists the model’s range at up to 4,700 nautical miles, which is what makes a Canada-to-Canary-Islands flight workable without switching to a much bigger wide-body plane. (aircanada.com) (airbus.com) That aircraft changes the economics of a route like this. A smaller long-range jet lets an airline test a leisure market with a few weekly flights instead of trying to fill a large aircraft every day through the winter. (airbus.com) (travelweek.ca) Tenerife is not a random beach add-on. The island receives millions of visitors a year, and Tenerife South handled more than 13 million passengers in 2024, making it the busier of Tenerife’s two airports and the main gateway for resort traffic. (aena.es) (webtenerife.com) The Canary Islands sell a different winter product from mainland Spain. Average daytime temperatures in Tenerife often stay in the high teens to low twenties Celsius during winter, which is why the islands market themselves across Europe as a cold-season sun destination. (spain.info) (webtenerife.com) Air Canada is also betting that Canadian traffic is only part of the story. Toronto Pearson and Montreal Trudeau are two of the airline’s biggest hubs, so a nonstop to Tenerife can also pull in connecting passengers from U.S. cities that already feed those airports. (aircanada.com) (torontopearson.com) (admtl.com) Tenerife’s tourism officials are treating the route as a demand-building tool, not just a transport change. In Air Canada’s announcement, Tenerife Tourism chief executive Dimple Melwani said the flights bring the island closer to a “high-value traveler” market in Canada and North America. (aircanada.com) The bigger airline story is that long, narrow routes are multiplying. Air Canada announced Tenerife alongside new winter flying to places like Rio de Janeiro, Cartagena, Guadalajara, and Santiago de Guatemala, which shows how airlines are using new aircraft to skip traditional European connection points and fly straight to leisure markets that used to look too small or too far. (aircanada.com)