[10] Gran Canaria Airport is an important hub for passengers travelling to West Africa (Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Cape Verde, among others), and to the Atlantic Isles of Madeira and the Azores.

In 1919, Frenchman Pierre George Latécoère was granted clearance from the French and Spanish governments to establish an airline route between Toulouse and Casablanca.

The airport opened on 7 April 1930, after King Alfonso XIII signed a royal order announcing that the military air force installations on the Bay of Gando would become a civilian airfield.

This included new parking spaces, enlargement of the terminal and the provision of a visual approach slope indicator system.

[citation needed] In December 2010, low-cost carrier Ryanair announced the opening of 3 new bases on the Canary Islands.

Plans have existed for several years to construct a rail link connecting the airport to Las Palmas and Maspalomas.

The Canary Islands Air Command (Mando Aéreo de Canarias – MACAN) is based in the city of Las Palmas.

This happens sometimes with heavy military transport, antisubmarine warfare and early warning airplanes; the islands do not have these on a permanent basis.

Lanzarote Military Airfield has permanently its own Air Force troops platoons and the radar for the air defence (the EVA 22, which covers the Eastern Canary Islands and the maritime area up to the Sahara), but it has no permanently based military planes, using the ones from Gando.

[118] At 1:15 PM on 27 March 1977, a bomb planted by the Movement for the Independence and Autonomy of the Canaries Archipelago (MPAIAC) exploded in a florist's shop on the terminal concourse.

Fifteen minutes of warning was given to the airport authorities,[119] who started to evacuate the building; the inside of the terminal was damaged and eight people were injured, one seriously.