Greece’s airports break all-time records in 2017

Greece’s airports hit an all-time high in 2017, breaking records nationwide and serving a total of 482,410 flights, which saw a 2.7 percent increase compared to 2016 at 469,553 flights, the country’s Civil Aviation Authority announced this week.

In addition, of the 482,410 flights in the 12 months of 2017, a total of 192,212 were domestic and 290,198 international. The total number of travellers going through Greek airports came to 58,018,128 in the 12-month period in 2017, up by 9.5 percent or an additional 5,025,732, compared to the same period in 2016 at 52,992,396 passengers.

In December, according to the same data, the number of passengers handled by Greek airports rose by 1.5 percent at 2.2 million. More specifically, international arrivals in December 2017 grew by 9.5 percent, or 599,216 passengers, against the same month in 2016 at 547,308.

During the last month of the year, the airports of Athens, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Rhodes and Chania were the busiest in terms of incoming traffic.

Heraklion airport in Crete, recorded the highest rate in passenger traffic (in its category for airports handling less than 4 million passengers per year) for the whole year in 2017, marking an increase of 10.8 percent. While Kos airport (in the middle category, handling 1-4 million passengers annually) recorded a 20.1 percent rise in traffic and the Paros airport (less than 1 million passengers) saw the largest yearly increase at 119.9 percent.