As summer draws near, all the more airlines are introducing new flights, adding more seats or boosting the frequency of their existing routes to destinations in Greece aiming to secure a piece of the growing market with local sector professionals expecting another record yeas at the country’s airport.
Dubai-based airline Emirates has announced the launch of a new year – round daily flight from Athens to New York. The Dubai-Athens Newark flight started on March 12. There has been no non – stop daily year-round service from Greece to the US since 2012.
British Airways has announced the launch of the direct flights from London City airport to Skiathos and will now serve 12 Greek destinations including Athens, Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini, Kos, Rhodes, Heraklion, Chania, Kalamata, Corfu and Zakynthos.
Low – cost carrier Scoot, owned by Singapore Airlines, aims to stimulate passenger traffic between Asia Pacific and Europe through Athens with Singapore – Athens flights every day Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sundays as of June 20. Responding to leisure traveler’s high demand during the summer holiday period, Air France will launch new routes from Athens to French regional airports Nice, Toulouse and Marseilles fro m July 24 to September 3.
Alitalia will launch a new daily non – stop service between Athens and Tel Aviv in May, responding to growing demand. Condor, the leisure carrier of Thomas Cook Group Air-lines, will launch new direct flights from Frankfurt to Thessaloniki. The seasonal route will run from May 2 until October 24, every Tuesday and Friday. and be operated with Airbus A320 aircraft.
Eurowings, a member of the Lufthansa Group, will also launch flights this summer to the destinations of Lesvos, Soamos, Mykonos, Karpathos, Santorini and Kavala.
Meanwhile, Ryanair has cut seating capacity by 17 percent to Athens, 7 percent to Thessaloniki, 17 percent to Corfu, 15 percent to Rhodes and 11 percent to Kefalonia. The Irish airline discontinued its Kos route but increased the capacity to Chania by 4 percent and to Mykonos by 39 percent.
Greece’s Aegean Airlines will add international routes from Athens to Kassel, Kuwait and Stuttgart in March, to Strasbourg in April; to Hanover in May; and to Edinburgh in June. The airline’s summer schedule will see boosted flights to Dusseldorf, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Stuttgart Cairo,Hanover, Alexandria, Madrid, Lisbon and Barcelona. Aegean will also launch direct flights from Tel Aviv to Thessaloniki in May.
Greek carrier Ellinair this summer will launch direct flights from Thessaloniki to Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Cologne. From the airoport of Heraklion, Ellinair will fly to Munich and Berlin. The airline will also launch a seasonal service from Kavala to St. Petersburg and Moscow from May 26 until September 10.
