AEGEAN Enhances Winter Network with Routes from Athens and Thessaloniki

Greek airline company AEGEAN has enhanced its winter network with the inclusion of 14 new routes from Athens and Thessaloniki.

In a company announcement, AEGEAN said it was maintaining flights to eight destinations from Athens, following a strong November in terms of international passenger traffic.

Basel, Cologne, Eindhoven, Florence, Oslo, Riyadh, Paphos and Podgorica are destinations to and from Athens International Airport (AIA) that AEGEAN will operate for the first time during the winter season.

Moreover, the six new international direct routes to Hamburg, Berlin, Zurich, Brussels, Milan and Rome that were launched from Thessaloniki for summer 2022 were maintained in November, contributing to the increase of the company’s international presence from the northern Greek city’s airport “Makedonia” by 25 percent, compared to the same month in 2019.

For the same period, a similar effort to extend the summer season was also carried out to and from Heraklion Airport, with particularly positive results, as the majority of flights to and from Germany, France and Switzerland were maintained. Meanwhile, in continuation of the more than 12-year cooperation with TEMES (developer of Costa Navarino), the flights to and from Kalamata Airport to Munich, Copenhagen and Stockholm took place.

Overall, AEGEAN saw November close with international passenger traffic reaching and marginally surpassing the corresponding levels of scheduled flights in 2019, reporting yet another recovery month for the company. AEGEAN carried approximately 560,000 passengers on its international network flights (a 50 percent increase compared to 2021) by offering 680,000 seats.

In the coming weeks, AEGEAN’s winter network will be further enhanced.

As from December 22, scheduled flights connecting Athens with Morocco (two weekly) will be reintroduced.

Also for March, there will be efforts to restore several seasonal routes from Athens and Thessaloniki as well as selected regional destinations, 1 or even 1.5 month earlier than the usual starting date of flights of the tourism season, which is usually set between April and May any given year.

AEGEAN CEO: Policies needed to support the low season

According to AEGEAN CEO Dimitris Gerogiannis, the creation or support of products that can facilitate the extension of the tourism season either at the end or at the early beginning of each year in destinations such as Crete, Rhodes and the Peloponnese is a constant goal for the company.

AEGEAN CEO Dimitris Gerogiannis.

“As is the enhancement of passenger traffic in Athens and Thessaloniki where we see many and important investments in new, small and large quality accommodation being made throughout the winter. For such an effort to bear fruits requires smart, targeted, and tactical initiatives and cooperation between all stakeholders involved across the entire value chain,” Gerogiannis said, adding that AEGEAN, once again, is willing to be actively involved or even lead such efforts.

“In this direction, we need to stress out that the role of the state and the country’s airports is obviously crucial for the timely formulation of policies to support the low season, which clearly has different and more difficult economic exploitation characteristics,” he said.