Regional Airports in Greece Welcome 32 Million Travelers in Jan-Oct Period

Photo © Greek Travel Pages (GTP)

More than 32 million passengers went through Greece’s 14 regional airports in the January-October period this year surpassing both 2022 and pre-Covid 2019 figures for the same period.

More specifically, according to data released this week by Fraport Greece, the company operating the 14 regional airports, passenger arrivals in the 10-month period to October rose by 8.4 percent over 2022 and by 12.5 percent compared to 2019.

In the January-October period, international traffic was up by 6.3 percent over 2022 to 25.9 million and domestic arrivals by 17.7 percent to 6.39 million.

According to Fraport data, the only airport to record losses was on Mykonos, where arrivals were down by 1.9 percent. The remaining 13 airports performed better than in the same 10-month period last year.

The largest positive change was recorded in Kavala (+21.2 percent), Thessaloniki (+19.5 percent), Lesvos (+14.1 percent), Chania (+10.9 percent), and Zakynthos (+9.4 percent).

Monthly arrivals also increased with October marking a 9.4 percent rise over the same month a year ago and a 21.9 percent rise against pre-pandemic 2019.

Greece’s regional airports handled a total of 2.4 million international arrivals in October and 687,000 domestic arrivals.

According to Fraport data, 12 of the 14 airports outperformed 2019 levels. Leading the way was the airport of Aktio, where traffic was up by 64.1 percent over 2019, followed by Zakynthos (+50.1 percent), Skiathos (+38.8 percent), Corfu (+37.6 percent), Chania and Santorini (+24.9 percent).

In terms of arrivals, Rhodes airport welcomed the largest number of travelers in October, up by 24.5 percent to 687,000, followed by Thessaloniki airport with over 657,000 arrivals, marking an 8.2 percent increase compared to 2019.

Airports still struggling to reach 2019 levels in October were those of Kavala, where figures were down by 15.3 percent over 2019 and Samos (-3.8 percent on 2019).