American Airlines Ready to Start Seasonal Athens-New York Direct Flights

For the 2022 summer season American Airlines will offer over 280,000 seats to Athens Airport

American Airlines is getting ready to launch its seasonal daily flight between Athens and New York, adding more travel options between Greece and the United States.

This is the second season American will be flying direct to Athens from New York with flights to begin on May 6, one month earlier than last year.

Flights will depart Athens Airport daily at 2:05 pm, arriving at New York JFK Airport at 6:05 pm the same day. The return flight departs JFK daily at 7 pm, arriving in Athens at 11:40 am the following day (all times local).

American’s service from Athens to New York will be operated with Boeing 777-200 aircraft.

The Athens-New York daily route will complement the airline’s daily flights to Chicago and Philadelphia, which resumed in April.

American Airlines celebrates 15 years of flying to Greece

American Airlines Regional Director for Europe Sales Cristian Lizana Prado.

Speaking during a media event in Athens, Cristian Lizana Prado, the airline’s regional director for Europe Sales, highlighted that this summer American will be offering 80 percent more capacity in Athens than in 2019 and 47 percent more compared to 2021, a result of larger widebody aircraft operating in the market and additional flying.

“We are celebrating 15 years of flying into Greece – a great milestone as it shows how important the Greek market is for us and also the interchange between Greece and the US,” Prado said.

For the 2022 summer season the airline will offer over 280,000 seats to Athens International Airport (AIA).

Having already started flights to Athens from Chicago and Philadelphia this month, the airline’s regional director for Europe said he expects a successful season.

“The first flights show that Americans are coming to Greece and vice versa also – Greeks are going to the US – and we expect good results. We’re here to stay,” Prado said.

Flights to Athens from Philadelphia launched in 2007 (operated by US Airways) and were continued by American following the merger of the two airline companies. American introduced the Athens-Chicago route in the summer of 2019, boosting the airline’s total traffic by 49.3 percent to some 135,000 passengers to the Greek capital.

In 2021, American launched its Athens-New York service and – although a post-pandemic year – the airline flew a total of over 130,000 passengers from all three US cities, managing to recover 96 percent of the passenger traffic achieved in 2019.

US most popular market for Athens Airport

On her part, AIA Director of Communications and Marketing Ioanna Papadopoulou said she is certain that American Airlines will surpass their 2019 levels this summer.

Papadopoulou welcomed American back to Athens, highlighting that the US market is traditionally the most important and popular market for Athens.

AIA Director of Communications and Marketing Ioanna Papadopoulou.

“It has demonstrated great resilience during the adverse pandemic period, driven also by the large and dynamic Greek-American community,” she said.

Last year, despite the lack of an air connection between Greece and the US in the first 5 months of the year due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, the US market managed to come in second in arrivals (some 300,000) to Athens Airport, laying the foundations for a dynamic start in 2022.

American is one of the four airlines that will be offering direct flights between the US and Greece in 2022.