Athens International Airport
| Athens
International Airport "Elefthérios Venizélos" Διεθνής Αερολιμένας Αθηνών "Ελευθέριος Βενιζέλος" |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| IATA: ATH – ICAO: LGAV | |||
| Summary | |||
| Airport type | Public | ||
| Owner | Greek Government | ||
| Serves | Athens | ||
| Location | Spata | ||
| Elevation AMSL | 308 ft / 94 m | ||
| Coordinates | |||
| Website | |||
| Runways | |||
| Direction | Length | Surface | |
| ft | m | ||
| 03R/21L | 13,123 | 4,000 | Asphalt |
| 03L/21R | 12,467 | 3,800 | Asphalt |
| Statistics (2006) | |||
| Passengers | 15,079,662 | ||
| Aircraft operations | 190,872 | ||
| Sources: airport website[1][2] | |||
Athens International Airport (Greek: Διεθνής Αερολιμένας Αθηνών, Diethnís Aeroliménas Athinón) known as "Elefthérios Venizélos", (Greek: "Ελευθέριος Βενιζέλος") (IATA: ATH, ICAO: LGAV), which began operation on 29th of March 2001, is the only civilian airport that serves the city of Athens. The airport is the major hub and base for Olympic Airlines, Greece's state-owned airline, and also for Aegean Airlines. It was named after the Greek politician Eleftherios Venizelos.
General information
The airport is located between the towns of Markopoulo, Koropi, Spata and Loutsa, about 20 km to the east of central Athens (30 km by road, due to intervening hills). The airport is named after Elefthérios Venizélos, the prominent Cretan political figure and Prime Minister of Greece, who made an outstanding contribution in the Cretan rising against the Ottoman occupation of Crete in 1896.
The airport currently has two terminals, its Main Terminal and Satellite Terminal, accessible by a foot-tunnel from the Main Terminal, with runways approximately 4 kilometres in length. The airport was developed by public-private partnership ; Greece holds 55% of the shares. It is regarded as one of Europe's most expensive airports, with restaurants and cafes paying very high rents, and airline companies accommodating very high landing fees. The airport was awarded "European Airport of the Year 2004", within the framework of the annual Institute of Transport Management (ITM) Awards, for its innovative entrepreneurial scheme and the airport's successful operation and achievements.
The airport is designed to be upgraded over the ensuing years in order to accommodate the increase in air travel, and its upgades are planned in a six-phase framework. The first (current) phase allows the airport to accommodate 16 million passengers a year; the sixth phase will allow the airport to accommodate as many as 50 million passengers a year. In 2006, the airport served 15,079,662 passengers, 5.6% more than in 2005.
A rail station immediately adjacent to the airport terminal (and accessible by an elevated walkway) was completed in time for the 2004 Olympics. The station is served by line 3 of the Athens Metro and by the Proastiakos suburban train service. The airport is also accessible by the Attiki Odos highway.
In 2005 and 2006, the Airport was awarded the Skytrax award for best airport in Southern Europe.
The airport has replaced the old Athens (Ellinikon) International Airport.
Awards
- European Airport of the Year - 2004
- Skytrax award for best Airport in Southern Europe - 2005 and 2006[3]
Robotic security
The new airport is equipped with two robotic systems (robots "Hercules" and "Ulysses") capable of handling suspect devices, designed to protect the lives of individuals as well as airport spaces, by safely identifying and removing explosives.
Hercules was donated by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation to the airport. It is a system capable of the safe collection and transportation of explosives for disposal. It is equipped with a spherical shaped tank with a diameter of 120 cm, and two robotic folding arms.
Ulysses is a system worth €94,000, donated by Soukos Robots ABEE. This system was manufactured in order to serve as a supplement to Hercules, allowing entrance in difficult access areas such as toilets, buses or aircraft. It is a light but highly efficient robot, equipped with a shock-absorbing system allowing movements on rough surfaces.
Incidents indirectly connected to the Airport
- On August 14, 2005 Helios Airways Flight 522, a Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 registered 5B-DBY crashed en route from Larnaca International Airport, Cyprus to ATH, near Grammatikon, Attica
Airlines and destinations
- Aegean Airlines (Alexandroupolis, Bucharest-Otopeni, Cairo , Chania, Chios, Corfu, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Heraklion, Ioannina, Kavala, Kos, Larnaca, Milan-Malpensa, Munich, Mykonos, Mytilene, Rhodes, Rome-Fiumicino, Samos, Santorini, Sofia, Stuttgart, Thessaloniki)
- Aer Lingus (Dublin) [seasonal]
- Aeroflot (Moscow-Sheremetyevo)
- Aerosvit Airlines (Kiev-Boryspil)
- airBaltic (Riga)
- Air Berlin (Munich, Nuremberg)
- Air China (Beijing, Dubai)
- Air Europa (Madrid)
- Air France (Paris-Charles de Gaulle)
- Air Malta (Luqa)
- Air Moldova (Chişinău)
- Air One (Bologna, Naples, Rome-Fiumicino)
- Air Transat (Montreal, Toronto-Pearson)
- Albanian Airlines (Tirana)
- Alitalia (Milan-Linate, Milan-Malpensa, Rome-Fiumicino)
- Alpi Eagles (Bari, Venice)
- Armavia (Yerevan)
- Austrian Airlines (Vienna)
- Belavia (Minsk)
- Belle Air (Tirana)
- Blue1 (Helsinki)
- Blue Line (Marseille)
- British Airways (London-Heathrow)
- Brussels Airlines (Brussels)
- Carpatair (Timişoara)
- Continental Airlines (Newark)
Cyprus Airways (Larnaca, Paphos)- Czech Airlines (Prague)
- Delta Air Lines (Atlanta, New York-JFK)
- DonbassAero (Donetsk)
- easyJet (Berlin-Schönefeld, London-Gatwick, London-Luton, Milan-Malpensa, Paris-Orly)
- EgyptAir (Cairo)
- El Al (Tel Aviv)
- Emirates (Dubai)
- Excel Airways (London-Gatwick)
- Finnair (Helsinki)
- flyglobespan (Glasgow)
- Georgian Airways (Tbilisi)
- Germanwings (Cologne/Bonn, Stuttgart)
- Gulf Air (Bahrain)
- Hellas Jet (Relaunches in 2007)
- Hellenic Imperial Airways (Launches in 2007)
- Hemus Air (Sofia)
- Iberia (Barcelona, Madrid)
- Ilyich-Avia (Lviv, Marioupolis)
- Israir (Tel Aviv)
- Jat Airways (Belgrade)
- KD Avia (Kaliningrad)
- KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (Amsterdam)
- KrasAir (Moscow-Domodedovo)
- Kuwait Airways (Dubai, Kuwait City)
- LOT Polish Airlines (Warsaw)
- LTU International (Düsseldorf)
- Lufthansa (Frankfurt, Munich)
- Malév Hungarian Airlines (Budapest)
- Middle East Airlines (Beirut)
- Norwegian Air Shuttle (Warsaw)
- Olympic Airlines
- Domestic: (Alexandroupolis, Astypalaia, Chania, Chios, Corfu/Kerkyra, Heraklion, Ikaria, Ioannina, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Kastoria, Kavala, Kefalonia, Kithira, Kos, Kozani, Leros, Limnos, Milos, Mykonos, Mytilene, Naxos, Paros, Preveza, Rhodes, Samos, Santorini, Sitia, Skiathos, Skyros, Syros, Thessaloniki, Zakynthos)
- International: (Alexandria, Amsterdam, Beirut, Belgrade, Berlin-Tegel, Brussels, Bucharest-Otopeni, Cairo, Dubai, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Geneva, Istanbul-Atatürk, Johannesburg, Kuwait, Larnaca, London-Gatwick, London-Heathrow, Madrid, Manchester, Milan-Linate, Milan-Malpensa, Montreal, Moscow-Sheremetyevo, Munich, New York-JFK, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Rome-Fiumicino, Sofia, Stuttgart, Tel Aviv, Tirana, Toronto-Pearson, Vienna)
- Qatar Airways (Doha)
- Rossiya (St. Petersburg)
- Royal Jordanian (Amman)
- Saudi Arabian Airlines (Jeddah, Riyadh)
- Scandinavian Airlines System (Copenhagen, Stockholm-Arlanda)
- Singapore Airlines (Singapore)
- SkyEurope (Budapest, Bratislava, Kraków, Prague, Vienna)
- Sterling Airlines (Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm-Arlanda)
- Sun D'Or (Tel Aviv)
- SunExpress (Izmir)
- Swiss International Air Lines (Geneva, Zürich)
- Syrian Arab Airlines (Aleppo, Damascus)
- TAROM (Bucharest-Otopeni)
- Thai Airways International (Bangkok-Suvarnabhumi)
- Turkish Airlines (Istanbul-Atatürk)
- Tunisair (Tunis)
- US Airways (Philadelphia) [Seasonal]
- Uzbekistan Airways (Tashkent)
- Viking Airlines (Stockholm-Arlanda)
- Vueling Airlines (Barcelona, Madrid)
- Wizz Air (Katowice)
References
- ^ Athens International Airport: Monthly Passenger Traffic 2006. Athens International Airport. www.aia.gr. Retrieved on 2007-02-11.
- ^ Athens International Airport: Monthly Traffic Development compared to 2005. Athens International Airport. www.aia.gr. Retrieved on 2007-02-11.
- ^ Airport of the Year - Regional Results. Skytrax. www.worldairportawards.com (2006). Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
