Athens Airport Posts 63% Profit Increase

Athens International Airport announced last month that full-year pretax profit in 2004 jumped 62.9 percent year-on-year to 47.1 million euros, boosted by the Summer Olympic Games and increased passenger traffic.

In 2004, 13.7 million passengers traveled through the recently built airport, up 11.5 percent from the previous year, while flights for the year reached 191,000.

Meanwhile, Athens’ Eleftherios Venizelos Inter-national Airport received two AETRA awards for ‘Overall Passenger Satisfaction’ as part of a conference on ACI quality of service at airports, held in Kuala Lumpur on June 1-2, achieving distinction for the fourth consecutive year.

A joint initiative of the International Air Transport Association and the Airports Council International, AETRA is the world’s leading annual airport benchmarking program for passenger satisfaction.

For the year 2004, when Athens hosted the Olympic Games, Athens International Airport received the following distinctions:

Award for 2nd place in the world in the competitive airport size category from 5 to 15 million passengers per annum, behind Helsinki;

Award for 3rd place in Europe regardless of airport size category, behind Copenhagen and Helsinki;

And according to the annual findings of the AETRA survey for 2004, Athens International Airport has been distinguished as a European leader for a wide range of services, such as “value for money/shopping facilities,” “value for money – restaurant/eating facilities,” “cleanliness of terminal,” and “business facilities.”