Irish budget carrier Ryanair is to boost its offering from Athens in summer 2015 with the introduction of three additional routes from the Greek capital to Bratislava in the Slovak Republic, Budapest in Hungary and a domestic link to the island of Santorini. The three new routes are part of a major expansion from the low-cost carrier which will see it double its Athens traffic to approximately 2.2 million passengers per annum.

Ryanair will be basing an additional Boeing 737-800 at Athens International Airport during summer 2015, increasing its based fleet to four aircraft. Alongside the latest routes it has already announced plans to introduce new summer flights between Athens and three other European capitals with a new link to Warsaw Modlin and continuation of winter services to Brussels Charleroi in Belgium, Rome Ciampino in Italy.

It made its debut in the Athens market in April 2014 and its summer 2015 schedule will encompass 12 destinations with existing international links to London Stansted, Milan Bergamo and Paphos and domestic connections to Chania, Rhodes and Thessaloniki.

“Ryanair is pleased to announce an additional three new Athens routes to Budapest, Bratislava and Santorini, as part of an extended Summer 2015 schedule, as we add another aircraft to Athens, bringing our investment to over $400m, confirmed Kenny Jacobs, chief marketing officer, Ryanair.

The three new routes will commence from the start of April 2015 with the Bratislava route being served three times weekly, the Budapest link four times weekly and Santorini on a daily basis with a second daily rotation to be introduced from June 2, 2015. The airline will be the sole operator on the route to Bratislava but will compete with Aegean Airlines to Budapest and both Aegean Airlines and Volotea to Santorini – the latter introducing flights in May 2015.

In a further boost to Athens’ network, Austrian carrier Niki has revealed it will launch a six times weekly route to the Greek capital from its Vienna base. The route to the mainland will complement the airline’s existing flights to the Greek islands, including Crete, Rhodes, Santorini and Mykonos.

“Greece has become the strongest growth market for Niki over the past few years,” said Christian Lesjak, managing director, Niki. “The recently decided-upon fleet conversion and our position as market leader will enable us to offer more flights from Vienna to Greece in the future."

The new connection to Athens will operate daily (except on Saturday) with an Airbus A320 and provide additional flexibility and the best connecting flights for holiday and business travellers to Greece. In addition, passengers from Greece will have access to Niki connections between Vienna and the global airberlin network.

The past three years has seen Greece, and in particular Athens, hit by the most severe financial crisis it has ever encountered; a challenging environment for the largest international airport in the country. The economic woes in Greece have had a profound effect on the aviation business in the country but passenger numbers at Athens International Airport Eleftherios Venizelos (AIA) have remained relatively robust and during the last quarter of 2013 the facility returned to growth.

This growth can be attributed to a range of factors, none more so than the strength of the airport’s relationship with airline partners which has resulted in a significant increase in available capacity. The ongoing network growth is a clear endorsement of its strong partnership concept with its airline operators and a scheme of aeronautical incentives and marketing support. For many years now it has been offering a “risk-sharing” incentive scheme, providing significant discounts to its charges for the airlines developing new and /or additional services out of Greek capital.

In our analysis, below, we look at network capacity from Athens International Airport over the past ten years. The impact of the financial crisis on the air sector is clear in 2011, 2012 and 2013, but a strong recovery from the airport and targeted incentive programmes has meant growth has returned and departure capacity last year grew 18.6 per cent to over 9.5 million seats and based on published schedules for 2015 will rise 1.8 per cent this year.

Data provided by