Report Says Volume of Greek Air Traffic Plunged 74.3% in 2020

A report came out on Thursday confirming the worst fears of Greek economic experts, stating that the country had seen a drop of 74.3% in the number of passengers who had traveled through their airports so far this year.
This amounts to only 9 million air travelers who had used airports in the country so far in 2020, a staggering drop of almost three-quarters of its business.
The number of international visitors coming into Greek airports this year so far amounts to 1,126,429, a stunning decrease from last year’s banner tourism season, which saw a total of 4,096,657 international arrivals.
Although very disappointing, the numbers did not come as a shock to any in the sector, due to the punishing effects of travel bans imposed on many nations because of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Greek media reports, the Civil Aviation Authority, or CAA, reported the precipitous drop in business in the first seven months of this year relative to the numbers seen in 2019. For the month of July 2020 alone, the high season for summertime travel to the country, passenger traffic at Greek airports had decreased 72.6%.
During the month of July, a total of only 2,722,854 million passengers came through Greece’s airports; in that same period, there was a precipitous drop of 72.5% in the number of foreign arrivals.
This means that there were fewer passengers overall in the first seven months of 2020 than there had been in the month of July only in 2019.
The figures for that banner month in Greek travel showed that there had been 9,930,332 air passengers passing through Greek airports.
The actual number of flights at Greek airports for the past seven months came to 115,402, a decrease of 60.3% compared to last year, which saw 290,859 flights take off and land in the country. Of this year’s total, 67,340 were domestic and just 48,062 were of international origin.
The number of July 2020 flights came to 33,255, showing a decrease of 56.5% from the same period last year, when a grand total of 76,370 flights took off and landed in Greece.