Aegean has started selling new routes for S19 from ATH.

- Ibiza: 2x weekly starting June 22, 2019.
- Sarajevo: 2x weekly starting June 13, 2019.
- Valencia: 2x weekly starting June 2, 2019.

What would be next? I am surprised Skopje is still announced despite the change in the airport name and the country.

With 5h35' total travel time, Aegean will provide the quickest commercial connection between the two summer party islands in Europe: JMK and IBZ.

It seems that both A3 and ATH will keep their momentum in 2019, with additional new S19 routes already announced like ORD with AA and MAD with UX.

Interesting. I wonder what’s the main market with Ibiza to Athens - Greek tourism to Ibiza or the other way around. No shortage of beaches and beautiful islands in Greece so maybe predominantly Spanish tourism to Athens and onward connections?

eurowings wrote:

Interesting. I wonder what’s the main market with Ibiza to Athens - Greek tourism to Ibiza or the other way around. No shortage of beaches and beautiful islands in Greece so maybe predominantly Spanish tourism to Athens and onward connections?

Aegean connects a lot of people from nearby countries to Western Europe. So likely (in addition to local Greeks), there will be passengers connecting from nearby destinations where Aegean flies to (TLV, BEY, AMM, IST, KBP, CAI, JED, RUH or KWI) to Ibiza.

I assume for SJJ it will be about Middle Easterns (Saudi, Kuwait...) visiting Bosnia.

VLC will probably be more about local Spanish connecting to Greek islands. Flying from Spain to Greek islands tends to be quite expensive and tortuous with connections.

SCQ83 wrote:

eurowings wrote:

Interesting. I wonder what’s the main market with Ibiza to Athens - Greek tourism to Ibiza or the other way around. No shortage of beaches and beautiful islands in Greece so maybe predominantly Spanish tourism to Athens and onward connections?

Aegean connects a lot of people from nearby countries to Western Europe. So likely (in addition to local Greeks), there will be passengers connecting from nearby destinations where Aegean flies to (TLV, BEY, AMM, IST, KBP, CAI, JED, RUH or KWI) to Ibiza.

I assume for SJJ it will be about Middle Easterns (Saudi, Kuwait...) visiting Bosnia.

VLC will probably be more about local Spanish connecting to Greek islands. Flying from Spain to Greek islands tends to be quite expensive and tortuous with connections.

Don't be so sure. Pretty much any Greek under 30 I know would prefer to go to Ibiza rather than say, Mykonos. Funny enough sometimes these flights can often be cheaper or comparable to boat tickets to the islands, so people will often search for something else. The only thing that may be holding them back is of course the financial situation, and until now the lack of a non-stop deterred many. Thing is Greek islands are cheaper than other places to go to. So most of us have visited the ''main'' ones by the time we're 27-28, so we don't go to the islands as much.

I don't disagree with what you're saying tho. Especially this summer, everywhere I was in Athens I seemed to run into Spanish people. I assume that many people from the Middle East wouldn't mind connecting onto IBZ with Aegean, especially with its prices and service.

SCQ83 wrote:

Flying from Spain to Greek islands tends to be quite expensive and tortuous with connections.

Expensive yes, but NOT tortuous! SummerJet is connecting Mykonos and Ibiza with scheduled NON-STOP flights!

https://www.encorejets.com/summerjet

I am surprised Aegean does not try BIO. Vueling flew a few summers ago BIO-ATH and BIO-JTR. Bilbao is the kind of secondary destination that should work fine for Aegean in peak summer.

debonair wrote:

SCQ83 wrote:

Flying from Spain to Greek islands tends to be quite expensive and tortuous with connections.

Expensive yes, but NOT tortuous! SummerJet is connecting Mykonos and Ibiza with scheduled NON-STOP flights!

https://www.encorejets.com/summerjet

Wow, what is the frequency of those flights? Or are just on demand?

SCQ83 wrote:

Flying from Spain to Greek islands tends to be quite expensive and tortuous with connections.

Depends. Iberia Express and Vueling fly nonstop from Madrid and Barcelona respectively to Heraklion, Mykonos and Santorini in the summer. And Aegean offers smooth connections via ATH from Madrid, Barcelona and Malaga.

It should be noted that so far no flights to the following destinations have been loaded for next summer: Genoa, Turin, Cluj-Napoca, Kuwait and Zadar. Not too surprised if these don't come back next year but I am a bit disappointed Kuwait didn't work out. I thought there would be more potential there, although I guess with only two weekly flights and Wataniya also launching the route this summer things were tough.

Let's see if they add any other destinations next year. As usual there will also be increases in frequencies.

OA940 wrote:

SCQ83 wrote:

eurowings wrote:

Interesting. I wonder what’s the main market with Ibiza to Athens - Greek tourism to Ibiza or the other way around. No shortage of beaches and beautiful islands in Greece so maybe predominantly Spanish tourism to Athens and onward connections?

Aegean connects a lot of people from nearby countries to Western Europe. So likely (in addition to local Greeks), there will be passengers connecting from nearby destinations where Aegean flies to (TLV, BEY, AMM, IST, KBP, CAI, JED, RUH or KWI) to Ibiza.

I assume for SJJ it will be about Middle Easterns (Saudi, Kuwait...) visiting Bosnia.

VLC will probably be more about local Spanish connecting to Greek islands. Flying from Spain to Greek islands tends to be quite expensive and tortuous with connections.

Don't be so sure. Pretty much any Greek under 30 I know would prefer to go to Ibiza rather than say, Mykonos. Funny enough sometimes these flights can often be cheaper or comparable to boat tickets to the islands, so people will often search for something else. The only thing that may be holding them back is of course the financial situation, and until now the lack of a non-stop deterred many. Thing is Greek islands are cheaper than other places to go to. So most of us have visited the ''main'' ones by the time we're 27-28, so we don't go to the islands as much.

I don't disagree with what you're saying tho. Especially this summer, everywhere I was in Athens I seemed to run into Spanish people. I assume that many people from the Middle East wouldn't mind connecting onto IBZ with Aegean, especially with its prices and service.

Fair enough, I suppose it will appeal to lots of people of marketed correctly. However give me Mykonos or Santorini over Ibiza any day and I’m under 30....personal preference

OlympicATH wrote:

Depends. Iberia Express and Vueling fly nonstop from Madrid and Barcelona respectively to Heraklion, Mykonos and Santorini in the summer. And Aegean offers smooth connections via ATH from Madrid, Barcelona and Malaga.

Things are improving but still there is a lot of untapped potential. Madrid-Mykonos and Athens-Málaga started this year. For instance MAD-JMK is only two weekly in high summer season. Which means Iberia sells tickets at extortionate prices considering Mykonos is also a very expensive destination. If you compare that to Mykonos-Frankfurt or Mykonos-London, those airports easily see multiple daily flights.

I think with more (Corfu, Zakynthos, Rhodes at least) and better connections, more Spanish tourists would visit Greece. For instance Croatia was an unknown country for Spanish tourists not many years ago, and this summer Madrid-Dubrovnik alone is up to 4 daily flights.

Thousands of gay men travel between Spain and Greece and their respective isles - IBZ, JMK, JTR, LPA - around party circuits and cruises in the summer months. I am sure you’ll see them on the the new A3 flights too - some of them likely also connecting from A3’s destinations east of ATH.

SCQ83 wrote:

It seems that both A3 and ATH will keep their momentum in 2019, with additional new S19 routes already announced like ORD with AA and MAD with UX.

I'm willing to bet that ATH will win the best airport in its category, for the marketing awards at the World Routes conference(mid-September in Guangzhou).

OlympicATH wrote:

SCQ83 wrote:

Flying from Spain to Greek islands tends to be quite expensive and tortuous with connections.

Depends. Iberia Express and Vueling fly nonstop from Madrid and Barcelona respectively to Heraklion, Mykonos and Santorini in the summer. And Aegean offers smooth connections via ATH from Madrid, Barcelona and Malaga.

It should be noted that so far no flights to the following destinations have been loaded for next summer: Genoa, Turin, Cluj-Napoca, Kuwait and Zadar. Not too surprised if these don't come back next year but I am a bit disappointed Kuwait didn't work out. I thought there would be more potential there, although I guess with only two weekly flights and Wataniya also launching the route this summer things were tough.

Let's see if they add any other destinations next year. As usual there will also be increases in frequencies.

According to Airlineroute, indeed some of those routes are chopped. No word about Kuwait though. Zadar never made a lot of sense to me; it is very close to Split. Same for Genoa and Turin to Milan-Malpensa or even Nice and Lyon.

https://www.routesonline.com/news/38/ai ... f-31aug18/

Routes currently not listed in S19:
Athens – Genoa
Athens – Turin
Athens – Zadar
Corfu – Moscow Domodedovo
Iraklerion – Berlin Tegel
Irakleion – Geneva
Irakleion – Moscow Domodedovo
Irakleion – St. Petersburg
Irakleion – Tel Aviv

Kuwait does not show up on schedules for next year and I'm afraid Tehran has also been zeroed out after this summer season.