Fraport Greece: Traffic at the 14 regional airports above 2019 levels

The performance of Greek tourism during the first months of 2023 is exceptional, something that foreshadows particularly positive developments for the current year. It is characteristic that passenger traffic at the 14 regional airports managed by Fraport Greece for the first quarter of 2023 was at levels above 3.5 million, surpassing the performance of 2019, while this year’s April saw a double-digit increase compared to April of 2019.

In particular, only for the month of April, which also marks the start of the summer program for some of the airlines, the increase in passenger traffic at the 14 regional airports (Aktio, Chania, Corfu, Kavala, Kefallonia, Thessaloniki, Zakynthos, Kos, Mytilini, Mykonos, Rhodes, Samos, Santorini, Skiathos) was at +13.3%, reaching a total of 1.63 million passengers compared to 1.44 million passengers in April 2019.

The picture in Q1

At the level of the first four months, which is also the period of the very low season especially for regional airports due to the high seasonality of Greek tourism, the increase compared to 2019 corresponds to +4.7% in terms of total passenger traffic, reaching this year for the January-April period to 3.513 million passengers from 3.356 million in the first quarter of 2019.

Meanwhile, international traffic was up double-digit 11.4% to 1.778 million from 1.597 million in the first quarter of 2019, even as domestic traffic was down 1.4% to 1.734 million.

In terms of performance per airport, the largest of the regional ones, Thessaloniki fully recovered compared to 2019 with a total of 1.717 million passengers, marginally reduced by 0.1% compared to the first quarter of 2019.

The highest rates of increase, 39% and 41%, are recorded in Aktio and Skiathos, where however the numbers of passenger traffic are low. In Mykonos and Santorini, a drop of 7.5% (78.6 thousand passengers) and 8.2% respectively (260 thousand passengers) was recorded.

Rhodes recorded an impressive performance with a 29% increase in passenger traffic with 491 thousand passengers in the first four months and international traffic having increased by 60% compared to 2019.

New initiatives

From the stage of the conference, Mr. Alexander Zinell, managing director of Fraport Greece, also referred to the group’s new initiatives, which has committed to zero CO2 emissions in all airports worldwide under its management by 2045, with an intermediate goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 75,000 tons by 2030: In the context of these new initiatives, as he indicated for the “Ioannis Daskalogiannis” airport of Chania, “we benefit from a modern building management system with the aim of optimizing energy consumption, while we are working towards installing photovoltaic systems at many of our airports.”