Aviation

The Hellenic Ministry of Transport and Communications (YME) and the Tourism Development Ministry held a joint press conference recently to reveal the process to aesthetically improve peripheral airports in Greece following a memorandum sent to YME by the Association of Tourist Enterprises (SETE) in December 2007.

The route Heraklion to Piraeus, now some six hours by high-speed ferry, could be done in one hour and 36 minutes by the end of 2008 with the new hovercrafts that can reach 200 kilometers an hour and can ‘fly’ some 12 meters above the sea.

New seaplane carrier Argo Airways (a member of Kanapitsa Group) is expected to commence twice daily flights from the port of Volos to Athen’s Flisvos Marina this month and extend its routes to Skiathos, Skopelos, Alonissos and Thessaloniki later in the summer.

The first stage of the “Open Skies Agreement” between the European Union and the United States of America was signed on March 30 in a ceremony held within the scope of the “EU-USA Summit” in Washington. The European Union-United States air transport agreement is considered an important achievement in the liberalization of the transatlantic aviation market and is the result of negotiations held between both parties since 2003.

A new scheduled route from Ljubljana in Slovenia to Athens commenced last month served by Adria Airways, Slovenias’ national airline and a regional Star Alliance member. The carrier flies three-times-weekly from Ljubljana to Athens on Tuesday, Thursday and Sundays, with an 86-seater Canadair Regional Jet 900.

The International Airline Transport Association announced it has become an institutional partner of Solar Impulse, the solar airplane project that will fly around the world with no fuel and zero emissions. The agreement was signed by the president of Solar Impulse, Bertrand Piccard, and the director general of IATA, Giovanni Bisignani, and establishes a framework of cooperation between the two organizations. IATA would provide assistance to ensure the smooth passage of the solar plane around the world.

The first flight by a commercial airline to be powered partly by biofuel recently took place as a Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet flew between London Heathrow Airport and Amsterdam using fuel derived from a mixture of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts. Virgin’s Boeing 747 had one of its four engines connected to an independent biofuel tank that it said could provide 20% of the engine’s power. The three other engines were capable of powering the plane on conventional fuel had there been a problem.

Athens International Airport announced another record-breaking year with a total of 16.5 million passengers in 2007, an impressive 10 percent increase from its 15.1 million passengers in 2006. There was an eight percent increase in the number of flights that for the first time surpassed the 200,000 flights threshold with 205,294 flights in 2007 compared with 190,872 in 2006.

Athens International Airport’s experience and know-how is being shared with both the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games and the Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) for the preparation and smooth operation of the arrivals and departures process at BCIA during the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing.

Singapore has concluded three bilateral Open Skies Agreements with Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The agreements allow both Singapore and Scandinavian airlines to fly between Singapore and any point in Scandinavia, via and beyond to any third country, without restrictions in capacity, frequency or aircraft type. These particular Open Skies Agreements are exceptionally flexible as they provide for unlimited “hubbing” rights for cargo airlines of the aforementioned. Under the new Open Skies Agreements, a Singapore cargo airline would be allowed to base its aircraft in any point in Scandinavia and use this hub to operate any other country without any restriction on destination, frequency of service or capacity.