Delta Air Lines and Greek carrier Sky Express have announced an agreement to offer flight connections for customers between the US and the Greek islands.
Delta is offering a record number of flights between the U.S. and Athens this summer, with services from Atlanta, Boston, and New York-JFK, as Greece continues to grow in popularity with American travelers.
Effective May 19th, Delta customers flying from North America will be able to fly on one of Delta’s daily nonstop services to Athens and then connect to 34 hotspots across Greece and Cyprus operated by Sky Express.
Flights include the Greek islands of Mykonos, Santorini, Crete
Destinations available to Delta customers one or two stops from the United States include the picture-perfect islands of Mykonos, Kefalonia and Santorini; family favorites Crete and Corfu; and Larnaca in Cyprus.
The new routes complement Delta and Sky Express destinations available through existing agreements with Air France and KLM via Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
Sky Express operates a fleet of modern, fuel-efficient aircraft comprising A320neo and ATR 72-600 aircraft suited to the geographical environment of the Greek islands.
Greece expects half a million tourists from the US this year
Greece expects half a million tourists from the U.S. this year, more than any other time before, Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias said earlier in May.
“We have never had 500,000 travelers directly from the U.S. to Athens [in one year],” Kikilias said, pointing out that the first flights arrived on March 7th from Atlanta, Chicago, and Boston, “and there is now a direct service on all three major American [airline] companies,” he said.
Nine flights a day are expected from the U.S. alone, a number that corresponds to 63 flights a week while—as Kikilias said—there seems to be the possibility of direct flights to other major U.S. airports as well as from the U.S. to Thessaloniki.
“Tourism is the great economic engine of the country—and rightly so,” said the minister, referring extensively to the optimistic messages for this year’s tourism season both in terms of reservations and the level of first-time arrivals in the country and citing the example of increased tourist flows from the U.S.
Related: All the Direct Flights Between Greece, U.S. to Start Off 2022
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