Greek airlines vote for Greek summer

To Kostas Ketsietzis

The aviation flight programs for this summer return to pre-pandemic levels, a fact which strengthens the prospects for Greek tourism, especially in July and August. As it seems, the competition in the Greek sky will be particularly increased during the summer months, both on the islands and other popular tourist destinations as well as in Athens.

Many airlines are betting on the prospects of Greek tourism, which either increase their presence in our country, restoring routes that were interrupted by the appearance of the pandemic in 2020, or launch connections with Greek destinations for the first time. Somehow, at least in the summer months, the offered airline seats to our country are expected to be 7% to 10% more than in 2019, which was a record year for Greek tourism. In fact, in the islands the offered places are expected to be by 15% more.

The new itineraries

A typical example is the low cost airline Volotea, which decided for this year to strengthen its presence in Greece with a total of 9 new routes, 4 of which will depart from Athens International Airport “Eleftherios Venizelos”. The Spanish airline will offer 1.4 million seats to and from 14 Greek first-line tourist destinations, ie 300,000 more than in 2019 and almost 800,000 more than in 2021. The nine new routes of the company, in fact, will connect for the first time directly Athens with Bilbao, Bordeaux, Nantes and Turin, but also the regional and island destinations of Heraklion, Mykonos, Kalamata, Santorini and Zakynthos with Nantes, Venice and Turin.

Jet2, which belongs to the second largest British tour operator, also brings more seats. This year, the airline connects the Greek capital with Birmingham for the first time and starts flights from Athens to another city of Great Britain, Manchester. The airline is expected to provide 1.1 million seats to and from Greece this summer, an increase of 86% compared to 2019. To be precise, in the warmer months of summer Jet2.com will offer 126 flights from and to popular regional destinations, such as Corfu, Chania, Heraklion, Kefalonia, Thessaloniki, Kos, Kalamata, Lesvos, Mykonos, Preveza, Rhodes, Skiathos, Santorini and Zakynthos. The company intends to continue the growth it already records, which is expected to reach 119% compared to 2019.

The German airline Condor is going to land in Athens for the first time this year, with two new flights from Dusseldorf, Germany and Leipzig. The German company has entered into an interconnection cooperation with the Greek SKY Express, through which it is allowed to book a single ticket in the network of both air carriers. Thus, German tourists with a ticket will be able to fly to Athens and then to the islands.

The new arrivals include BA’s EuroFlyer, a subsidiary of British Airways, with routes connecting Athens with Gatwick, and Air Albania, which adds the Athens-Tirana route to its flight business. A vote of confidence in the potential of Athens and Greek tourism is given by the low-cost airline, based in Norway, Flyr, which starts Oslo-Athens flights on June 30. The company will connect our country with the capital of Norway twice a week until the end of October.

Record flights from the USA

There is also an increase in connections to the other side of the Atlantic, with US airlines planning a record number of daily flights from the US to Athens. For example, Delta will offer more flights this summer than ever between Athens and the United States, including one new flight to Boston, 11 to New York (JFK Airport) and one daily to Atlanta. In the heart of the summer, nine flights are expected daily, more than 460,000 available airline seats, bringing the two countries even closer. Air Canada has launched flights from Toronto and Montreal, with the goal of continuing them for the first time until the end of November. In the summer, the data will be taken into account and the final decision will be made on whether Air Canada will connect Athens with Canada throughout the year.

Aegean designs

Under these circumstances, as the summer season approaches, the gap in Aegean flight activity is expected to narrow by 2019, a year in which the pandemic had not occurred and tourism had set a record. This year the aviation project compared to 2019 is expected to be reduced by 30% in the first quarter, by 18% in the second quarter, by only 5% in the period July-September and to remain at the levels of 2019 for the last three months of the year. Aegean is offering 15 million to 15.2 million seats this year, aiming to increase the flight occupancy rate to 75%. Most of the company’s fleet (80%) this summer will operate from the airports of Athens, Thessaloniki and Larnaca, with the remaining 20% ​​of capacity to be invested in the activity of the region.