Gulf carriers help fill the Greek airline void

Greece’s demise in the last few years has provided a boost for airlines connecting Athens with Hellenic outposts around the world via the Gulf, while tapping demand from business travellers hunting for trade in far-flung regions.

With direct services in short supply since the breakdown of flag carrier Olympic Airways, Qatar Airways and Emirates are mopping up so-called friendsand-family bookings. Emirates offers daily flights between Athens and Dubai using Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, while Qatar Air deploys smaller planes but offers more frequencies on its Athens-Doha route, with three flights a day available from June 1. “Greece is popular because of the traffic flows of the Greek diaspora,” said Hubert Frach, Emirates’ sales chief for the Americas, Europe, Africa and Russia. “Links between Greece and emerging markets are growing as the economic downturn is forcing companies to look beyond traditional regions.”

The Gulf’s location means eastbound flights to onward destinations such as Australia, home to the second-largest overseas Greek population, are favoured, though Emirates is also examining direct flights from Athens to North America, where connectivity is patchy outside the summer months. A combination of favourable ticket prices and close to 90 per cent occupancy, 10 points higher than the Emirates average, makes Athens one of the carrier’s top routes, Frach said.

The passenger tally on the service reached 224,000 in the year through March, swollen by double-daily services during some weeks last summer, Frach said. Carrying seafarers for Greece’s shipping industry is also lucrative, the executive said. Capital controls in Greece this week that limit cash withdrawals and online bank transactions have thrown travel into disarray. Ryanair Holdings Plc, the Irish low-cost carrier that serves 11 destinations in Greece, said it’s letting customers buy tickets in cash for the time being.