Greek Airport Nine-month Passenger Traffic Figures Soar

Heraklion Airport. Photo: GTP

Greek airports saw a record-breaking 10 percent rise in passenger traffic for the first nine months of the year, according to the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority data released this week.

More specifically, Greek airports handled a total of 53 million passengers in the January-September 2018 period compared to 48.2 million in the same period last year, breaking all records to date. The number of flights came to 435,699: 160,959 domestic and 274,740 international, rising by 9.2 percent against last year’s figures.

Photo: AIA

For the month of September, the number of passengers increased by 10.6 percent to 8.6 million and the number of flights by 12 percent to 67,177. The number of foreign passenger arrivals came to 3,198,349, up by 10.8 percent compared to 2017 at 2,886,032 arrivals.

Leading airports in terms of passenger traffic in September were Athens International Airport (AIA) handling 2.5 million travelers, Heraklion Airport with 1.2 million and Rhodes Airport at 908,085.

Of the country’s smaller airports, top performers in the nine-month period were those of Sitia (Crete), Milos and Naxos islands marking increases of 110.6 percent, 70.6 percent and 58.1 percent, respectively.