Flights – Arrivals Rise in March for Greece’s Regional Airports

Airplane flying over the Dodecanese.

Greece’s 14 regional airports are following the upward tourism trend, reporting a 2.5 percent rise in traveler traffic in March compared to pre-Covid 2019, said Fraport Greece, the company running the airports.

More specifically, the country’s 14 regional airports handled more than 731,000 travelers arriving on charter flights at airports on popular destinations such as Mykonos, Santorini, and Corfu.

International arrivals increased by 14.1 percent compared to 2019, but domestic passenger flows dropped by 4 percent.

Source: Fraport Greece.

Compared to the same month in 2022, passenger traffic increased by 32.9 percent with domestic travel up by 32.1 percent and international arrivals stronger by 34 percent.

Ten of the 14 regional airports recorded significant increases in passenger traffic with those of Corfu, Chania (Crete), Rhodes and Skiathos in the lead and increases there surpassing 40 percent in March. Corfu Airport recorded the highest growth handling 34 percent more arrivals in March compared to the same month in 2019.

Meanwhile, on the downside, passenger traffic through the regional airports of Kavala, Thessaloniki, Santorini and Lesvos was down by 24.2 percent, 4.1 percent, 16.4 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively, for the month compared to 2019.

Source: Fraport Greece.

The number of flights touching down at Greece’s 14 regional airports increased by 2.6 percent over 2019 with international flights up by 10.2 percent and the number of domestic flights down by 0.5 percent.

In the first three months of the year (Q1), 1.89 million passengers went through the country’s regional airports down by 1.8 percent over Q1 2019. International traffic flows increased by 5.2 percent in the January-March period, Fraport said, but domestic traffic fell by 5.6 percent over the same period in 2019.

Leading the way in the period under review was the airport of Skiathos with a 39.7 percent increase, followed by the airports of Chania (Crete) and Zakynthos, where passenger traffic was up by 20.6 percent and 20.4 percent, respectively.

Skiathos Airport.Source: @Cargospotter video.

The poorest performance for the three-month period was reported by the airports Kavala, down by 29.2 percent, Santorini (-22.9 percent) and Corfu (-16.3 percent).

On an annual basis, passenger traffic increased by 43.4 percent with international traffic up by 51.1 percent and domestic traffic by 39.1 percent. Main source markets for the period under review were: Germany, the UK, Cyprus, Italy and Austria.

 In relevant news, the regional airport of Chania on Crete will be hosting the 14th ACI Europe Regional Airports Conference & Exhibition (RACE 2023), to be held for the first time in Greece on April 25-27.