2024 record numbers & “The… first-wing” for 2025!
During 2024, our brand new record year with 31.85mio PAX, +24.6% growth to 2019, ATH welcomed 6 New Destinations, 5 New Airlines and lots of new services. The “first-wing” and “first new destination” for 2025 is airHaifa, commencing operations as early as January 2nd, 2025 and connecting Haifa to Athens.
Spectacular traffic growth continued in 2024, with Athens International Airport reaching a new historic high with 31.85 million PAX, resulting in 3.68mio additional PAX to 2023.
However, what is more fascinating is that Athens achieved a growth of 24.6% when compared to the pre-Pandemic era (2019). That is +6.28mio additional PAX to 2019.
As per ACI-Europe (Major European Airports' Benchmarking YtNovember), Athens achieved the TOP-strongest growth to 2019 among all Capital and Major European airports. The European average remains slightly below 2019 at -1.2%.
Demand for travel to Athens grew further as almost all International destinations, in the TOP20 ranking, achieved strong growth. Strong growth is recorded both in Direct International traffic 15.7% and in Foreign arrivals 12.0%.
Athens is smoothing out seasonality, as 6 months recorded traffic between 3mio to 4mio monthly PAX, compared to just 1 month in 2019.
During 2024, Athens welcomed 6 New Destinations, 5 New Airlines and 25 Additional services on existing routes, connecting the capital of Greece to 55 countries and 166 airport destinations, with 68 airlines offering direct services. Out of the total of 68 carriers , 27 are Low Cost airlines, offering services to 79 airport destinations.
With the start of 2025, Athens already welcomed its first New Airline and New Destination with airHaifa inaugurating a direct route to Haifa on the 2nd of January, operating 5 weekly frequencies, already recording high load factors.
For the Winter season, flights are operating every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday.
Israel, is an important market for Athens reaching a New all times record almost at 1mio round-trip direct PAX in 2024. That is a growth of 87% to 2019.
The Israeli market proved resilient for Athens, even during hard times, as it maintained substantial traffic volumes during the pandemic-years and extremely strong growth in 2023 and in 2024.
Further evidence of the Israeli market importance for Athens and its strength, is the fact that Tel-Aviv was served by 8 airlines in 2024!! Tel-Aviv is the route in Athens network that enjoys the highest number of airlines offering scheduled PAX services.
In Summer of 2024, Athens was connected with 11 daily departures to Tel-Aviv, achieving one of the strongest daily frequencies level in the entire Athens network.
Athens attractiveness to the Israeli market will be further enriched in February 2025, as Israir will add another New Destination for Athens, operating direct services to Eilat. The airline will offer 2 weekly frequencies between Athens and Eilat, operating on a A320 equipment.
NOTE: In Greece, there is a tradition for the New Year, which is called «ποδαρικό», which means the first-foot ( the first person ) to enter the home of a household on New Year's Day and is seen as a bringer of good fortune for the coming year.
airHaifa is our “first-wing” 😉 for 2025, so here’s to a year with lots of new airlines, full and safe flights and peace around the world!