Athens International Airport

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the airport in Athens, Georgia, United States, see Athens-Ben Epps Airport.

Athens International Airport "Elefthérios Venizélos" Διεθνής Αερολιμένας Αθηνών "Ελευθέριος Βενιζέλος"

IATA: ATH - ICAO: LGAV
Summary
Airport type		Public
Serves		Athens
Elevation AMSL		308 ft (94 m)
Coordinates		37°56′11″N, 23°56′40″E
Runways
Direction	Length		Surface
Direction	ft	m	Surface
03R/21L	13,123	4,000	Asphalt
03L/21R	12,467	3,800	Asphalt

Athens International Airport, "Elefthérios Venizélos" (Greek: Διεθνής Αερολιμένας Αθηνών, "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 basis for Olympic Airlines, Greece's state-owned airline as well as Aegean Airlines.

1 General information
2 Robotic security
3 Incidents indirectly connected to the Airport
4 Airlines and destinations
5 External links

[edit] 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 had an outstanding contribution in the Cretan rising against the Ottoman occupation of Crete in 1896.

Athens International Airport Main Terminal.

The airport has currently 2 terminals, the Main Terminal and the Satellite Terminal, accessible by a foot-tunnel from the Main Terminal. The runways are approximately 4 kilometres in length. The Airport was developed by public-private partnership. Greece holds 55% of the shares. It is considered as one of the most expensive airports in Europe, with its restaurants and cafes paying very high rents, as well as airline companies having to pay very high landing fees. The Airport was honoured with the title of "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.

Interchange at the Attiki Odos near the Athens International Airport.

The airport is designed to be upgraded over the ensuing years in order to accommodate the increase in air travel. The upgades are planned in a 6-phase framework. The first phase (current phase) allows the airport to accommodate 16 million passengers a year. The 6th 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.

Outside Elefthérios Venizélos Main Terminal

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 in 2006, the Airport was awarded with the Skytrax award for best Airport in Southern Europe.

The airport has replaced the old Athens (Ellinikon) International Airport.

[edit] Robotic security

Visual Communication

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.

[edit] 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

[edit] 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 [begins June 5, 2007])
Aeroflot (Moscow-Sheremetyevo)
Aerosvit Airlines (Kiev-Boryspil)
airBaltic (Riga [begins April 5, 2007])
Air Berlin (Munich, Nuremberg)
Air France (Paris-Charles de Gaulle)
Air Malta (Luqa)
Air Moldova (Chişinău)
Air One (Naples, Rome-Fiumicino)
Air Transat (Montreal, Toronto-Pearson)
Albanian Airlines (Tirana)
Alitalia (Milan-Malpensa, Rome-Fiumicino)
Alpi Eagles (Venice)
Armavia (Yerevan)
Austrian Airlines (Vienna)
Belavia (Minsk)
Belle Air (Tirana)
Blue1 (Helsinki)
Blue Line (Marseille)
British Airways (London-Heathrow)
Carpatair (Timişoara)
Continental Airlines (Newark [begins June 8, 2007])
Cyprus Airways (Larnaca, Paphos)
Czech Airlines (Prague)
Delta Air Lines (Atlanta [seasonal; year-round daily service from May 16th, 2007], New York-JFK)
DonbassAero (Donetsk)
easyJet (Berlin-Schönefeld, London-Gatwick, London-Luton, Milan-Malpensa, Paris-Orly [begins May 4 2007])
EgyptAir (Cairo)
El Al (Tel Aviv)
Emirates (Dubai)
Excel Airways (London-Gatwick)
Georgian Airways (Tbilisi)
Germanwings (Cologne/Bonn, Stuttgart)
Finnair (Helsinki) [begins July 1, 2007)
flyglobespan (Glasgow-International [begins May 24, 2007])
Gulf Air (Bahrain)
Hellas Jet (begins in May 2007)
Hellenic Imperial Airways (begins in 2007)
Hemus Air (Sofia)
Iberia (Barcelona, Madrid)
Ilyich-Avia (Lviv, Marioupolis) [begins summer 2007]
Israir (Tel Aviv)
Jat Airways (Belgrade)
KD Avia (Kaliningrad) [begins June 15, 2007]
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 (Alexandria, Alexandroupolis, Amsterdam, Astypalaia, Beirut, Belgrade, Berlin-Tegel, Brussels, Bucharest-Otopeni, Cairo, Chania, Chios, Corfu/Kerkyra, Dubai, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Geneva, Heraklion, Ikaria, Ioannina, Istanbul-Atatürk, Johannesburg, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Kastoria, Kavala, Kefalonia, Kithira, Kos, Kozani, Kuwait, Larnaca, Leros, Limnos, London-Gatwick, London-Heathrow, Madrid, Milan-Linate, Milan-Malpensa, Milos, Montreal, Moscow-Sheremetyevo, Munich, Mykonos, Mytilene, Naxos, New York-JFK, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Paros, Preveza, Rhodes, Rome-Fiumicino, Samos, Santorini, Sitia, Skiathos, Skyros, Sofia, Stuttgart, Syros, Tel Aviv, Thessaloniki, Tirana, Toronto-Pearson, Vienna, Zakynthos)
Pakistan International Airlines (Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Milan-Malpensa)
Qatar Airways (Doha)
Rossiya Airlines (St. Petersburg)
Royal Jordanian (Amman)
Saudi Arabian Airlines (Jeddah [begins June 21, 2007], Riyadh [begins June 24, 2007])
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)
Swiss International Air Lines (Geneva, Zürich)
Syrian Arab Airlines (Aleppo, Damascus)
TAROM (Bucharest-Otopeni)
Thai Airways International (Bangkok)
Turkish Airlines (Istanbul-Atatürk)
Tunisair (Tunis)
US Airways (Philadelphia [seasonal, begins May 25, 2007])
Uzbekistan Airlines (Tashkent)
Viking Airlines (Stockholm-Arlanda)
Virgin Express (Brussels)
Wizz Air (Katowice)