Adds from May new routes to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
Aegean will operate up to 11 weekly flights to and from Saudi Arabia, empowering the fleet operating these routes with new Airbus 321 neo aircraft.
Dimitris Delevegos
Aegean's goal is to be the main choice for those who wish to transfer from an Arab country not only to Greece, but also to a European city.
Aegean is strengthening its presence in the ever-growing Middle East market, where the demand for air travel is growing at rates higher than the global average. The aim of the airline, through its hub in Athens, is to be the main choice for those wishing to transfer from an Arab country, not only to Greece but also to a European city. Moreover, Greek-Arab relations are perennially strong, with the value of bilateral trade with Saudi Arabia reaching 1.3 billion euros in 2021. In the spring of 2022, the Greek-Saudi investment forum took place in Riyadh.
Thus, from May and throughout the year, the airline will connect, for the first time, Athens with Dammam, the fifth most populous city in Saudi Arabia after Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca and Medina. The airline will operate from “El. Venizelos” to King Fad Airport which is the third largest, based on passenger traffic – with approximately 10 million people – in Saudi Arabia. Also from June it will increase the number of regular weekly flights to Riyadh and Jeddah, while connecting Athens directly with Kuwait.
In total, the airline will operate up to 11 weekly flights to and from Saudi Arabia, strengthening the fleet operating these routes with new Airbus 321 neo aircraft. The new planes it receives – by the end of this year will have been added to the fleet of nine of the neo family – serve Aegean's strategy to further expand its footprint as a regional air carrier. In this direction, this summer Aegean will connect Athens with Cairo and Alexandria with two and three daily flights respectively and will offer twice as many seats compared to the previous year. It will also connect Alexandria with Athens with three weekly flights, while it will operate four flights per week all year round from Athens to Amman, Jordan. And in addition to the Athens-Beirut route, which operates daily and all year round, new seasonal routes are added that directly connect Mykonos and Heraklion with Beirut.
Aegean is active in the wider Middle East region since 2009, starting with the direct connection to Lebanon, with scheduled and chartered flights. In recent years, the airline has been constantly adding new destinations (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and now Kuwait) and increasing both the frequency of routes and the seats offered. At the end of last month, Aegean announced that this summer it will also connect Ben Gurion to Tel Aviv through three new direct scheduled routes from Ioannina, Chania and Kalamata, connecting Israel's second largest city with Athens and Thessaloniki all year round . According to predictions by Boeing analysts, in the next twenty years passenger traffic in the Middle East will increase annually by 4%, while approximately 3,000 new aircraft will be required.
