Greek Airport Traffic to Reach Record High in 2023

Greek airport traffic reached a record high in 2023, despite the devastating fires and deadly floods in the past two months, according to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency.

Based on the data thus far, according to forecasts of the President of Athens International Airport Richardos Lambiris and Fraport Greece CEO Alexander Zinell, 2023 is expected to be the best year for passenger traffic.

The forecast is based on the high airport traffic numbers in all Greek airports in the first eight months of the year. These include Athens International Airport, twenty-four airports managed by the Hellenic Civic Aviation Authority, and fourteen regional airports managed by Fraport Greece.

Greek airport traffic increased compared to the corresponding eight-month period from 2019 to 2022, while the month of September also marked a record-high.

In particular, in the first eight months of the year, the number of Greek airport traffic arrivals and departures of foreign and domestic passengers totaled 50,152,145, while in 2022, this was 43,788,675 and 44,895,202 in 2019.

Percentage-wise, there is a 14.5 percent passenger traffic increase compared to 2022 and an increase of 11.7 percent compared to 2019.

The Athens International Airport and the fourteen Fraport Greece airports alone broke the forty million passenger mark in eight months.

Record Year for Athens International Airport

Specifically, Athens International Airport received 18,668,442 visitors from January to August, while 24,106,822 visitors landed at the fourteen regional airports for a total of 42,775,264 domestic and international passengers.

International visitors alone reached 31,999,447 in the eight-month period, with 12,796,657 at AIA and 19,202,790 at the regional airports managed by Fraport Greece.

“If the good performance continues at this rate, this year we will have a record year for the Athens airport, surpassing the historical performance of 2019,” said the AIA President, speaking at the 6th Infrastructure and Transport Conference – ITC 2023.

Lampiris presented figures confirming the positive course of Greek airport traffic. For 2019, AIA recorded 25.58 million passengers. According to data, by August of this year, the number had reached to 18.7 million passengers, compared to 17.3 million for the same period of 2019.

“There were days when 102,000 passengers went through the AIA terminal, an impressive figure for the current data,” he said.

Travelers from the US, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Israel, Cyprus, Canada, Spain, Austria, and Germany are those who are predominately responsible for increased traffic at the Athens International Airport.

Indicatively, in the first eight months of the year, the number of passengers from Austria increased by approximately forty-five percent, while US passengers increased by sixty-three percent  compared to the corresponding period in 2019.

Fraport Airports Shows Equal Traffic Increase

Fraport also estimates that 2023 will be a record year for Greek airport traffic in the fourteen regional airports it manages.

In addressing the 6th ITC 2023, Alexander Zinell, the company’s CEO said, “Our estimate, for the whole of 2023, is 33 million passengers compared to 31.19 million last year.”

For Fraport Greece, between January and August, passenger traffic at all regional airports exceeded twenty-four million compared to twenty-two million in 2022. This marked an increase of 8.5 percent.

This increase in domestic traffic contributed to the increase of 4.9 million passengers compared to 4.1 million last year, i.e. an increase of 18.4 percent. The number of foreign passengers went up to 19.2 million compared to 18.1 last year. This was an increase of 6.2 percent.

All destinations showed an increase in Greek airport traffic compared to the previous year. Thessaloniki airport recorded the largest percentage increase of 20.8 points.

The Kavala airport was up by 18.9 percent; Mytilene up by 15.1 percent; and Skiathos and Chania up by 11.4 percent and 11.2 percent respectively.

Compared to 2019, the fourteen regional airports showed a total increase of 10.9 percent, with Mytilene being up by 0.6 percent and Kavala by 5.6 percent.

The greatest increase in percentages of Greek airport traffic were recorded by Aktio at 29.2 percent, Skiathos at 25.7 percent, Chania at 21 percent, and Corfu at 22.3 percent.

Source: Athens-Macedonian News Agency (AMNA)