Major Airports in Greece

Greece runs one of Europe’s most distinctive airport networks: a single dominant hub at Athens, backed by a sprawling archipelago of island and coastal airports that come alive every summer. With thousands of inhabited islands and one of the world’s biggest tourism industries relative to its size, the country leans on air travel like few others — and its busiest gateways outside Athens are holiday islands rather than big mainland cities. The national carrier, Aegean Airlines (a Star Alliance member), and its regional arm Olympic Air tie the islands back to the capital.

Below we map and rank Greece’s airports by the number of nonstop destinations each one serves, drawn from live route data on AirportRoutes. Because Greece is such a charter- and seasonal-heavy market, we rank by regularly-served destinations — routes flown often enough to count as scheduled service — rather than raw nonstop totals, which inflate the summer-only island airports. The figures come from observed flight data (a large sample rather than a complete published timetable), so treat them as a guide to relative connectivity, not official totals.

Which Greek airports have direct flights to the US?

Transatlantic flying from Greece is concentrated entirely at Athens. ATH offers nonstop service to a handful of US cities — New York (JFK), Newark, Boston and Atlanta — flown by Delta, United and American, with Emirates also operating a Newark–Athens route as a fifth-freedom service. Most of these run as seasonal summer routes, ramping up from spring and thinning out over the winter.

No other Greek airport has scheduled nonstop flights to North America. Even the busy island gateways such as Heraklion, Rhodes and Corfu are short- and medium-haul only — overwhelmingly European leisure markets — so travellers heading to the islands from the US connect through Athens or a major European hub such as London, Frankfurt or Istanbul.

A closer look at Greece’s main airports

✈️ Athens (ATH)

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Athens International Airport (Eleftherios Venizelos) opened in 2001 at Spata, about 30 km east of the city, replacing the old Hellinikon airport on the coast. It is Greece’s largest and busiest airport by a wide margin and the main hub of Aegean Airlines and its sister carrier Olympic Air, as well as a major base for Sky Express. A metro line and suburban rail link it directly to central Athens and the port of Piraeus.

Serving Athens and the wider Attica region, ATH reaches around 125 regularly-served nonstop destinations — including a long-haul network to the Gulf, North America and Asia that no other Greek airport comes close to. Top routes include Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Santorini, Larnaca and Frankfurt.

Main airlines: Aegean Airlines, Sky Express, Olympic Air, Ryanair, Wizz Air, easyJet. See the full route map for ATH on AirportRoutes →

🏝️ Heraklion (HER)

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Heraklion “Nikos Kazantzakis” Airport sits just east of Crete’s largest city and is the island’s main gateway — and one of the busiest airports in all of Greece during the summer. Hemmed in by the city and the sea, it has long run close to capacity, which is why a brand-new airport at Kastelli, southeast of Heraklion, is under construction to replace it.

Serving Heraklion and eastern Crete, HER reaches about 95 regularly-served nonstop destinations, overwhelmingly European leisure markets that surge between April and October. Top routes include Athens, Rhodes, Thessaloniki, Tel Aviv and Paris.

Main airlines: Aegean Airlines, Jet2, easyJet, Sky Express, Wizz Air, Ryanair. See the full route map for HER on AirportRoutes →

🏛️ Thessaloniki (SKG)

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Thessaloniki “Makedonia” Airport is the main gateway to northern Greece, about 15 km southeast of the country’s second city on the Thermaic Gulf. It is Greece’s third-busiest airport and an important secondary base for Aegean, Ryanair and other carriers, with strong links across the Balkans and central Europe alongside the domestic network.

Serving Thessaloniki and Macedonia, SKG reaches around 79 regularly-served nonstop destinations. Unlike the islands its traffic is steadier year-round. Top routes include Athens, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Munich and Larnaca.

Main airlines: Ryanair, Aegean Airlines, Olympic Air, Sky Express, easyJet, Eurowings. See the full route map for SKG on AirportRoutes →

🏰 Rhodes (RHO)

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Rhodes “Diagoras” Airport — named after the ancient Olympic champion Diagoras of Rhodes — lies on the northwest tip of the island and is the main gateway to the Dodecanese. It is one of Greece’s great summer-charter airports, packed with northern-European holiday flights from spring to autumn and far quieter in winter.

Serving Rhodes, RHO reaches about 67 regularly-served nonstop destinations — though its raw nonstop count climbs past 90 in peak season, a reminder of how seasonal the island market is. Top routes include Athens, Heraklion, Thessaloniki, Tel Aviv and Prague.

Main airlines: Ryanair, easyJet, Smartwings, Jet2, Condor, TUI fly. See the full route map for RHO on AirportRoutes →

🏰 Kos (KGS)

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Kos “Hippocrates” Airport sits in the centre of the Dodecanese island, birthplace of the ancient physician Hippocrates. Like its neighbour Rhodes, it lives and dies by the summer holiday season, drawing a heavy flow of charter and low-cost flights from Germany, the UK and Scandinavia.

Serving Kos, KGS reaches around 52 regularly-served nonstop destinations, almost all of them seasonal European leisure routes. Top routes include Athens, Thessaloniki, Tel Aviv, Zurich and Prague.

Main airlines: Ryanair, easyJet, Condor, Jet2, TUI. See the full route map for KGS on AirportRoutes →

🐢 Zakynthos (ZTH)

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Zakynthos “Dionysios Solomos” Airport serves the Ionian island of Zante — famous for Navagio (Shipwreck) Beach and its loggerhead turtles — from a site just south of the main town. It is a classic seasonal leisure airport, busy with UK, German and central-European holiday flights through the summer.

Serving Zakynthos, ZTH reaches about 52 regularly-served nonstop destinations in season. Top routes include Athens, London, Amsterdam, Prague and Manchester.

Main airlines: Jet2, TUI Airways, Ryanair, Wizz Air, easyJet, Volotea. See the full route map for ZTH on AirportRoutes →

🌋 Santorini (JTR)

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Santorini (Thira) Airport sits on the east coast of the famous volcanic caldera island in the Cyclades. With a single runway and a compact terminal, it is one of Greece’s most capacity-constrained airports — every summer it strains to handle the crush of visitors drawn to the island’s clifftop villages and sunsets.

Serving Santorini, JTR reaches around 44 regularly-served nonstop destinations at the height of summer, thinning sharply in winter. Top routes include Athens, London, Paris, Milan and Thessaloniki.

Main airlines: Ryanair, Volotea, easyJet, Jet2, Wizz Air, Olympic Air. See the full route map for JTR on AirportRoutes →

🏝️ Chania (CHQ)

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Chania “Ioannis Daskalogiannis” Airport, on the Akrotiri peninsula northeast of the city, is the gateway to western Crete and the island’s second airport after Heraklion. It serves the popular beaches and gorges of the west — Balos, Elafonisi and the Samaria Gorge — and is heavily seasonal.

Serving Chania and western Crete, CHQ reaches about 41 regularly-served nonstop destinations. Top routes include Athens, Thessaloniki, Munich, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.

Main airlines: Ryanair, easyJet, Condor, Aegean Airlines, Discover Airlines, Wizz Air. See the full route map for CHQ on AirportRoutes →

🌊 Mykonos (JMK)

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Mykonos Island National Airport sits a couple of kilometres from the Cycladic island’s main town. Mykonos’s reputation as a glamorous, upmarket summer destination is reflected in its air service — a burst of seasonal flights from across Europe (and a strong Italian and Israeli leisure flow) that all but disappears in the off-season.

Serving Mykonos, JMK reaches around 36 regularly-served nonstop destinations in peak season. Top routes include Athens, Tel Aviv, Paris, Milan and London.

Main airlines: Ryanair, easyJet, Neos, Volotea, Aegean Airlines, Olympic Air. See the full route map for JMK on AirportRoutes →

🏰 Corfu (CFU)

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Corfu “Ioannis Kapodistrias” Airport, on the edge of Corfu Town, is the gateway to the lush northern Ionian island that has drawn British and central-European holidaymakers for generations. Its short runway, hard up against a lagoon and the sea, makes for famously scenic approaches.

Serving Corfu, CFU reaches about 35 regularly-served nonstop destinations — but its raw nonstop count more than doubles to 77 at the peak of summer, the single clearest example of Greece’s charter seasonality. Top routes include Athens, London, Vienna, Rome and Manchester.

Main airlines: Ryanair, easyJet, Wizz Air, Condor, Jet2, Smartwings. See the full route map for CFU on AirportRoutes →

Greece’s other regional and island airports

Beyond the busiest ten, Greece has a long tail of smaller regional and island airports. Several punch above their size in summer thanks to charter traffic, while the smallest survive mainly on domestic links to Athens.

Preveza / Aktion (PVK) on the western mainland actually ranks ninth nationally by regularly-served routes — it doubles as the air gateway to the resort island of Lefkada and the Ionian coast, with heavy UK and central-European summer charters. Kefalonia (EFL) and Skiathos (JSI) are classic seasonal island airports; Skiathos, in the Sporades, is well known among aviation enthusiasts for its short runway and low, beach-skimming approaches.

Kalamata (KLX) serves the southern Peloponnese and the Messinia resort coast, while Samos (SMI), Mytilene (MJT) on Lesbos and Kavala (KVA) in the north handle a mix of seasonal international and year-round domestic flights. Patras / Araxos (GPA), near Greece’s third-largest city, sees only a light seasonal schedule. Smaller still are the largely domestic fields — Karpathos, Chios, Samos’s neighbours and a string of tiny island airstrips — that connect to Athens and Thessaloniki and keep the more remote islands on the network year-round.

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