Aegean Airlines

By Alexandra Kassimi

Aegean Airlines celebrated the first anniversary of its merger with Olympic Air, announcing that the two carriers’ international traffic has grown by 493,000 passengers year-on-year to reach 4.7 million, while domestic traffic has gone up by 652,000 passengers to 5.1 million.

Fares to all destinations have fallen by an average 34 percent.

Aegean Airlines announced on Wednesday it will spend $300 million on the acquisition of seven new Airbus A320ceos in the next couple of years, and is planning a tender between Airbus and Boeing next year for the radical renewal of its fleet, starting with aircraft acquired in 2007.

A combination of concern in the Eurogroup over the future of the Greek economy if the country were to exit the bailout program and of negative data on German growth led the Greek stock market to one of its worst sessions in the last decade yesterday. Resistance to keep the benchmark above 1,000 points was crushed, pushing the bourse to another year-low.

Nine firms have made non-binding bids for Cyprus Airways with Ireland's Ryanair and Greece's Aegean Airlines among those still interested in buying the loss-making national carrier, a report said Thursday.

Potential buyers of Cyprus Airways have until Wednesday to submit nonbinding offers for the loss-making national carrier, with Ryanair and Aegean Airlines in the running.

Ireland’s budget carrier Ryanair said last week that it was ready to submit a firm offer for Cyprus Airways, before the government extended last Friday’s deadline for nonbinding offers to Wednesday.

Ryanair and Aegean Airlines are among more than 15 applicants which have made a non-binding expression of interest to buy loss-making Cypriot flag-carrier Cyprus Airways, officials said on Thursday.

Aegean Airlines resumed its services to and from Tel Aviv, Israel, on Friday, the company announced in a statement.

The Greek airline had suspended both regular and chartered flights to Israel for security reasons on Wednesday.

Services were restored following directives from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

By Alexandra Kassimi

Aegean Airlines has applied to enter the first stage of the process to sell Cyprus Airways, according to a bourse filing by Greece’s biggest carrier on Wednesday.

The benchmark of the local bourse managed to claw back morning losses and expand, albeit marginally, for a fifth day in a row on Thursday. However, observers are concerned about continuing low turnover levels, which remained far below the 100-million-euro mark.

Singapore Airlines on Tuesday started twice-weekly direct flights from Athens to Singapore, every Monday and Thursday.

The service will run to October 9 on Boeing 777-200ER aircraft.

The airline also operates 33 weekly flights linking Athens and Singapore via Istanbul in a code-share partnership with Aegean and Turkish Airlines.