New Iraklio airport to keep charges low

By Tassos Telloglou

The new airport at Kastelli in Iraklio, Crete, will be ready in four years’ time and will thankfully manage to dodge the high charges seen at Athens International Airport due to its concession agreement, which have resulted in reduced traffic.

The concession of the new airport, the second in Greece to be conceded in this fashion after AIA, will be for 35 years and the project’s experts have taken into account the charges at other competitive terminals in the Mediterranean, such as those on Malta, Cyprus and Tenerife. The aim is to have travelers spend less than 2 percent of their overall layout on airport charges.

The Kastelli terminal will replace the existing one that is considered out of date given that it has only one runway, in the wrong direction and with insufficient infrastructure to receive the volume of passengers traveling to the country’s second most popular air destination.

Sources have told Kathimerini that in order for the existing airport to respond to the growing tourism traffic, the Infrastructure Ministry is trying to find ways for its partial improvement through temporary means.