Athens Airport Soars to New Heights with 28 Million Passengers in 2023

Athens International Airport (AIA) in 2023 reached a record high with over 28 million passengers passing through its doors, surpassing its pre-Covid 2019 performance by some 10 percent.

According to data released on Thursday, a total of 28,174,150 passengers passed through the Greek capital’s airport during the January-December twelve-month period, surpassing the corresponding previous record of 2019 which was some 25.57 million.

More specifically, the year 2023 ended with Athens International Airport’s traffic exceeding 2022 levels (22,728,668) by 24 percent and higher than the respective 2019 levels by 10.2 percent.

Domestic and international passengers surpassed 2022 levels by 18.9 percent and 26.4 percent, while also exceeding 2019 levels by 13.3 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively.

It should be noted that Athens Airport’s 2019 record had already been broken in November as passenger traffic in 2023 recorded high increases month by month. In October, for example, AIA was among the airports in Europe reporting the highest increases in passenger traffic compared to the same month a year ago, according to data released by the Airports Council International Europe (ACI Europe).

December: 1.86 million passengers

In December alone, the airport’s passenger traffic amounted to 1.86 million, i.e. 17.1 percent above December 2022, but also 13.6 percent higher than the pre-COVID December 2019.

Domestic and international passengers in December surpassed the 2022 levels by 11.9 percent and 19.4 percent and the 2019 levels by 20.8 percent and 10.7 percent, respectively.

Flights

Overall, for the year 2023, Athens International Airport’s number of flights amounted to 241,604, i.e. 13.2 percent above the 2022 levels and 7.1 percent above the respective 2019 levels.

Analytically, both domestic and international flights were above the 2022 volumes by 7.4 percent and 18.1 percent, while versus the 2019 levels, the observed growth was at the level of 10.5 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively.