Athens Airport traffic on the rise forfirst half of 2022
The first six months of the year have been very busy for Athens International Airport with traffic performance on the rise, strong network developments and lots and lots of actions from the Airline Development & Marketing team. Following 2 years under heavy travel restrictions due to the Pandemic, when Athens performed stronger among all major European airports, 2nd quarter of 2022 has been a period of “quasi-normality”.
Strong Traffic performance
During the first half of 2022, the airport’s passenger traffic totaled approximately 9.0 million, and was below the respective 2019 levels by 20%, despite the heavy travel restrictions and the Omicron variant during the 1st quarter of the year. Analytically, domestic passengers lagged behind the 2019 levels by 13.2% and international passengers by 23.5%. The “O” variant outbreak and the war in Ukraine had a negative impact in traffic also during Q1 22, with recovery accelerating from March/April developing quickly into a very busy Summer. In this period, Athens was connected to 50 countries and 148 airport destinations (116 International and 32 Domestic) served by 66 airlines, offering Scheduled Passenger services.
Summer 2022 starts to show significant signs of normality. During Q2 2022, recovery in Passenger traffic at Athens International Airport accelerated with June 2022 reaching and even surpassing June 2018 by 0.2% or 5.2 thousand additional PAX. 2018 was Athens 2nd best year ever, with a total traffic of 24.1mio PAX. In comparison to 2019, traffic reached 93% levels, lagging behind by 178 thousand PAX. So, it feels like 2018 again at Athens International Airport !!
Rebuilding the Network and beyond
The attractiveness of the City of Athens and the Country overall and the proven resilience of our market, is further evident by the high number of new developments secured and materialized this Summer. In specific, Athens welcomed the addition of 6 new Destinations, 6 new Airlines and 39 additional services on existing routes. The importance of these developments are even more profound, taking into consideration the fact that many new additions were introduced even during the pandemic period.
Bilbao with Aegean and Volotea, Birmingham with Jet2.com, Boston with Delta, Florence with Aegean, Nis with AirSerbia and Turin with Volotea all connected to Athens this Summer, while we had the pleasure to welcome Air Albania, Condor, Euroflyer, flyr, Jet2 and TUS Airways. In addition to the new destinations and airlines, Athens welcomed a large number of service resumptions with Aegean, Volotea, the return of Air Transat after 2 years of absence and many-many more.
USA is Athens TOP performing market in terms of passenger traffic recovery, as US traffic surpassed 2019 by 64% (Jan – Jun). Boston is Athens 5th addition in the US market, during the last 3 years. Last Summer 2021 and prior to Boston, Athens welcomed New York (JFK) with American, Atlanta with Delta and Washington with United. With this latest development, for Summer 2022 Athens is connected to 7 airports in USA, serving 6 Cities, with non-stop services offered by 4 airlines, operating 63 weekly departures / or 9 daily departures. Strong developments in the US market are even more important for Athens, due to the fact that a wide-body equipment is required, as a minimum, to operate the service because of the range. For an airline to add a wide-body service to the Athens market, it means that the airline is confident that they can fill the seats; and they are !!.
Having a solid base due to the strong Summer traffic performance and forward bookings, airlines are reporting plans to extend a number of Summer services to year-round.
Supporting our airline partners
Athens International Airport remained committed in supporting airline partners during the difficult pandemic years by providing significant Discounts and Marketing support, as well as maintaining regular communication and constantly feeding the airlines with data, market survey findings and information.
During 2022 and despite strong recovery volumes, Athens International Airport continues to provide support to airline partners with the extension of the very successful and widely acknowledged Restart Incentive’s scheme, with the full utilization of traditional developmental incentives, as well as with enhanced Marketing Support and actions in promoting airlines in the local market.
Athens International Airport Airline Development and Marketing team, spent almost 1 month traveling more than 27,000 miles from US to Asia, during the 1st half of 2022, to meet airlines in their central offices , attend conferences, while it funded and organized 22 airline related events, from inaugurations, to Trade and Press events, to special airline anniversary events.