Aegean Airlines management announced its 2016 route network during a Press Conference in Athens attended by Elena Kountoura, Minister of Tourism, as well as, Greek tourism industry representatives. The new network marks the third year of continued strong growth by Aegean and the increasing contribution to the Greek economy and tourism sector.
In 2016 Aegean will be operating at a total of 145 different destinations, 111 international and 34 domestic in Greece. This network encompasses 45 different countries.
Approximately 16.2 million seats will be made available, an increase of 1.1 million from 2015. The flights will be operated by one of the youngest fleets in Europe and will include four more brand new Airbus A320ceos to be delivered between November 2015 and March 2016. Aegean plans to operate 61 aircraft in 2016, 47 Airbus A320/321s and 14 Bombardier Q400/100s.
During the summer season of 2016 thirteen additional destinations will be launched from Athens and will bring the number of direct services to 101. The 14 new routes are: Amsterdam, Bari, Dublin, Jeddah, Krakow, Lille, Lisbon, Ljubljana, Luxembourg, Naples, Nice, Palma de Mallorca, Vilnius and Split. The new countries served from Athens are 6: Ireland, Luxembourg, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia. Extra frequencies are also planned for existing routes in all major source markets of Greek tourism as the network additions from past years continue to mature.
Besides serving Athens, the new routes will offer a very high number of connection opportunities, via the Athens hub, to 30 Greek destinations plus Cyprus and neighbouring countries. The number of international passengers connecting through Athens to Greece domestic in 2015 doubled versus 2014 and will exceed 1 million by year end. This development will naturally continue in 2016. The Athens hub works in combination with the regional bases of Thessaloniki, Heraklion and Rhodes where 16 aircraft are based and a very high number of non-stop routes continue to be operated and new routes are added every year.
Aegean Airline’s Vice Chairman, Mr. Eftichios Vassilakis, stated at the Press Conference: “Exactly two years after acquiring Olympic Air we have moved to the next level, thanks to the potential we created for the company with the synergies, the efforts and the maturation of our excellent team. In about 3 years we have had a balanced expansion of our regional bases, as well as of the Athens base, by approximately 3 million passengers, transferring this year more than 11.5 million passengers, to more than 40 countries and Greece. Even this difficult and full of challenges year, we received brand new Airbus A320ceo’s during the capital controls and supported the Greek tourism with a growth rate many times higher than the market’s rate, which except for Athens was stagnant. Furthermore, with lower fares and increased international flights, we increased significantly the traffic to less popular destinations, affected by the reduction of domestic tourism, keeping the promise we made when we acquired Olympic Air.
In 2016, looking forward to the economy stabilisation, we continue our efforts actively with 14 new destinations and 1.1 million additional seats. With our new 4 Αirbus we shall reach 61 aircraft and 16 million seats in 45 countries. Additionally, we continue to develop new services for our passengers, to support the Greek families with plans such as “Konta stous neous” (Supporting Young People), to promote Greek products and Greek culture and feature moments from Greece. Some initial steps have been taken, but we need a closer and more efficient collaboration between public and private stakeholders for the promotion of Greece, because we are facing many challenges, having limited available resources. It is only with collaboration and joint effort we will be able to overcome the stagnation that also threatens tourism”.
