Greece’s leading airline AEGEAN has broken an all-time record reaching 15 million passengers in 2019, a 7 percent increase in total passenger traffic last year.
In an announcement on Thursday, the company revealed it was an impressive achievement that coincides with its 20 years anniversary since first taking off.
“We had a 7% growth in total passenger traffic, 11% more passengers from last year at the international network and 3% more at the domestic network,” said management.
AEGEAN and Olympic Air carried 14.99 million passengers in 2019, nearly 1 million more than the previous year, offering 17.85 million seats in total.
According to AEGEAN, this increase was driven both from the Athens hub (+11%) as well as the regional bases of Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Chania, Rhodes, Kalamata (+ 8%) where they are growing at a significantly larger pace compared to the general trend of the country, which shows signs of reduction.
Domestic traffic also reported a marginal increase of 3%, despite the remaining significant burden of increased passenger VAT, which remains for four consecutive years (2016-2019) at 24%.
Load factor rate improved by almost 1 percentage point (pp), from 83.9% in 2018 to 84.8% in 2019.
"We achieved an 11% growth in international traffic and a 7% overall for 2019 by expanding our capacity mainly at the beginning and end of the traditional tourist season," said Dimitris Gerogiannis, CEO of AEGEAN.
"Aegean will continue to invest in expanding the tourist season by offering enhanced quality services to our customers as this is at the quest for achieving both sustainable development and growth for the company, tourism industry and the country," added Gerogiannis.
*Image courtesy of AEGEAN Airlines
