Day by day, the traffic at Heraklion Airport "Nikos Kazantzakis" is increasing in view of the summer, and the beginning of another dynamic tourist season is recorded. Since 27 March, when the tourist season formally opened, flights to and from abroad have been steadily increasing, as from 23 foreign arrivals on the last weekend of March, on the first weekend of April the number of foreign flights was 89, while on the weekend of 12-13 April the number of foreign arrival flights reached 127.
"From Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday, the number of flights at the airport is estimated to reach 290," Heraklion airport director Iakovos Ouranos told Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA-MPA), explaining that most of the aircraft are full of passengers.
"The first months of each tourist season are linked to the date of the Catholic Easter. In 2024, Easter was on 31 March so we can explain why there were more international passengers in March 2024 than in March this year. This year the Catholic Easter coincided with the Orthodox Easter on 20 April , so we expect arrival to be up this year," Ouranos explained, adding that "so far, since the beginning of the year, we have a passenger traffic that is 8.4% up."
The resulting data show that this season, the Nikos Kazantzakis airport will operate, especially during the summer months, at its limits. "Every year, its infrastructure and its employees of all institutions and specialties are tested. And this year as everything indicates, and barring any contingency, as tourism as you know is affected by many factors, will be a good year at the same high levels as last year, perhaps with a slight increase," said Iakovos Ouranos who pointed out that the months of July-August are still the months of peak traffic, where there is not much room for growth.
This year the countries that traditionally hold the first places at Heraklion Airport are expected to be the same: Germany, the United Kingdom and France. The Heraklion airport director stressed that in recent years, Poland has also been on the rise, as has the Netherlands, which is in the top five countries.
As far as the figures are concerned, the Heraklion airport director explained that after 2022, passenger traffic at Heraklion Airport is steadily above 8 million, with a peak in 2024 when it reached 9.34 million.