Athens’ Eleftherios Venizelos Airport (AIA), Greece’s biggest and busiest airport, is set to break the passenger traffic record it set in pre-pandemic 2019, handling 26.31 million passengers over the first 11 months of 2023.
The figure equates to an increase of 24.5 percent compared to Jan-Nov 2022, but even more importantly marks a 9.9 percent increase over the corresponding period in 2019.
Both domestic and international passenger traffic were up over the 11-month period, by 19.4 and 26.9 percent respectively compared to 2022 and 11.7 and 8.7 percent compared to 2019.
Specifically, for November 2023, an off-season month for air travel to Greece, passenger traffic at AIA reached 1.306 million, an increase of 21.1 percent compared with November 2022 and 11.7 percent compared to the corresponding month in 2019.
Higher tourist arrivals during the summer months underlie expectations that 2023 will prove a record-breaking year for the nation’s all-important tourism sector, according to a recent economic bulletin from the National Bank of Greece.
