Passenger traffic at Chania airport has increased by 8.4 per cent over last year in 2024, with the most foreign visitors during the tourist period coming from the UK – more than 100,000 British visitors passed through Daskalogiannis Airport in August. The increase in passenger traffic is reflected in figures released last week by Fraport Greece, which manages the airport.

Most notably:
— In November 2024, the increase over the same month in 2023 was 5.8%
— In October the increase was 13.4%
— For the period January to November overall there was an increase of 8.4% over last year, with a total figure of 3,881,075 passengers compared with 3,580,603 last year.

Countries of origin
— In November 2024, with the tourist season coming to an end, the biggest number of passengers was from Greece (65,552), followed by Cyprus (2,880), the UK (2,519), Sweden (1,981) and Germany (1,623).
— In October 2024, passengers from Greece were again the largest number at 82,922, followed by the UK with 68,180, Germany with 57,709 and Denmark with 38,107.
— In September the British came first with 87,122 visitors, followed by Greece with 85,597, Germany with 67,396, Poland with 58,007 and Denmark with 49,450.
— In August the number of British passengers topped 100,000 at 101,794 on a total of 587 flights, followed by Greece with 94,426 passengers, Germany with 67,211 and Denmark with 61,008.

Big increase nationwide in November
At a national level, according to Fraport Greece, the total number of passenger movements in the airports it manages in the country in November 2024 was 876,317, an increase of 11.6% on the same month last year. Moreover, “from the beginning of 2024 to today, the 14 regional airports have received around 35.2 million passengers, an increase of 6.4% compared with the corresponding period of 2023, which corresponds to around 2 million extra passengers. In addition, since 2017, when Fraport Greece took on the management of the 14 regional airports, they have so far received more than 211.7 million passengers,” Fraport said in a press statement.
(Haniotika Nea, 13/12/24)

Implications for tourism
It should be noted that the figures given by Fraport consolidate both arrivals and departures and transit passengers,which means that the actual number of visitors will be around half of the figures quoted. There is also no distinction between tourist and business flights, the latter of which must constitute a proportion of the figures for Domestic/Greek flights.

With passenger movements at Heraklion’s Nikos Kazantzakis Airport predicted to reach 9.2 million this year (i.e. 4.6 million arrivals), it seems that Crete is approaching some 6 million tourist arrivals. This is a staggering figure for an island with a population of some 650,000 people, albeit one of relatively low population density, and it is only set to increase. A surge in visitor numbers is expected following the opening of the new Kastelli-Heraklion airport, scheduled for February 2027, as its 3,800 m runway will be able to accommodate the larger aircraft used on long-haul routes.

An encouraging sign is that the biggest increases in traffic are being recorded for months outside the high season, i.e. February, May-June and October, suggesting that the much desired progress towards year-round tourism may be gradually taking place.