Traffic at Greece’s regional airports dropped by 90% in July, says Fraport

Fraport Greece is disappointed. Data it collected in the first days of the opening of tourism in July are discouraging and show a drop by 90%, few passengers and very limited chances to reverse the situation.

“Abnormal landing for airports and tourism prospects” General Development Director of Fraport Greece George Velos told state-run news agency amna on Monday.

Passenger traffic at Macedonia Airport in Thessaloniki dropped by 94% in the first 15 days of June compared to the same period last year, while in the second half of the month the fall was 87% compared to last year.

Regarding the first week of July, traffic showed a decrease of 78% compared to the same period last year.

There were 39,000 passengers  while in the same week last year there were 177,000, Velos said.

HE pointed out that equally discouraging is the data for the airport of Kavala, where in June the traffic dropped by 96% compared to last year, while from July 1 until today, when the international flights “opened”, the drop reached 91 %.

In passenger numbers this translates as follows: In the first week of July, the number of passengers traveling at Kavala airport was 1,200, while in the same period last year 13,000.

In all 14 regional airports managed by Fraport Greece in June, passenger traffic fell by 96.7% compared to last year, and in the first week of July by 90%.

“We see that there is a great deal of caution in the world to travel and the way the numbers are formed are much lower even than those we expected after the outbreak of the coronavirus”, stressed  Velos.

He added that “even the messages we receive from them hoteliers are not at all encouraging in terms of bookings and we estimate that the margins of reversal of the situation to date are very limited “.

Velos stressed that the airport “Macedonia” lost this year, among other things, “a very important route, the one that connects Doha with Thessaloniki” while a big loss is the cancellation of JET2 flights from the United Kingdom.

“Despite the obstacles, we are continuing to work on upgrading our airports. An investment of almost half a billion euros. The works for 10 of the 14 airports have already been completed and by the end of the year they will have been completed in their entirety “, underlined Velos.

Beginning of July, media reported that Fraport was seeking from the Greek state a compensation of 175 million euros for revenue losses in the first six months of 2020 due to the impact of the pandemic.