Athens Airport | Athens International Airport, Greece ATH

Athens Airport

The national airport of Athens "Eleutherios Venizelos" serves the city of Athens. Its operation commenced in March 2001 and this new airport replaced the national airport of Elliniko, which served Athens for approximately the last 6 decades. The new airport received its name in the honor of the great Cretan politician Eleutherios Venizelos, who was a leader in the revolution in Crete in 1896 against the Ottoman Empire and then ended up as the Prime Minister of Greece. Also, as a Prime Minister, he founded the Ministry of Aviation and he was the first who tried to organize the political aviation in Greece.

The first plans for transferring the airport from the Elliniko to some other location were initiated during the period of dictatorship, a time when Athens started to expand. As a result, the old airport became totally surrounded by everywhere. The idea was kept alive even after the (Political changeover), and notably in 1976 a study was presented to the Greek Government which suggested that the ideal location for a new airport would be Spata. However, as it was the time that Greece entered a period with many internal and external problems, the entire plan was given up.

In the beginning of the 1990’s it was obvious that the Elliniko could not serve the augmented passenger needs for the future – unless it expanded itself. Yet ,as this was not feasible no way, and with the protests rising regarding noise and high danger, the Greek Government finally decided to transfer the airport to an area outside Athens. The location remained the same, and at July 31st 1995, following an international competition, the German company Hochtief was selected for the construction and co-ownership of the airport with the Greek State.

In accordance with the standards of IATA, its code is ATH(the same as that for Elliniko)
and according to the standards of ICAO is LGAV. The access to the airport can be achieved by vehicles via the Attica odos and by railway (suburban railway, line 3 of the Athens Metro.) There are also express routs of OASA from various locations in Athens and there are also taxis.

In 2008, Athens airport won the distinction of “the golden pillow” by the newspaper “The Age” which is published in Melbourne and within the same year period it was distinguished with an environmental award by the European Committee with the award “Green Building”, and this was due to the fact that it succeeded in cutting down on the energy consumption despite the increase of the passengers.

Last year, the airport of Athens had 16,47 million passengers, although there was later on a slight decrease amounting to 0,4%.

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