By Vincenzo Claudio Piscopo
Aegean Airlines Consolidates Network, Adds New Emirates Codeshare Agreement
On Monday, Greece’s flag carrier Aegean Airlines signed a codeshare partnership agreement with the national airline of the Arab Emirate of Dubai, Emirates. Aegean Airlines, through this deal, has thus reached 18 Airline Partners and further consolidates its network.
This agreement between Emirates and Aegean Airlines will allow travelers to benefit, through Athens International Airport of increased connectivity to eight different destinations in Greece using a single ticket: Kerkyra, Chania, Irakleion, Mikonos, Thira, Rodi, and Salonicco e Alexandropoulos. Emirates currently serves the largest international airport in Greece with 12 weekly flights operated by Boeing 777s.
On flights operated by Aegean Airlines, the Arab airline will affix its own code, offering passengers a seamless booking experience and a single, consistent baggage policy. At the same time on flights operated by Emirates between Dubai and Athens, the Greek airline will place its own code.
Emirates and Aegean Airlines will subsequently increase their joint codeshare network starting in October 2022, adding eight more regional European routes via Athens, including Bucharest, Belgrade, and Naples, as well as westward on Emirates’ flights to Newark from Athens and New York JFK from Milan.
This agreement is the second that the Greek flag carrier signed in just under a month. At the end of July, it had signed another exclusive cooperation deal with ELAF group. This group, in Saudi Arabia, is a long-standing leader in the travel and tourism industry, famous for its range of award-winning hotels. This partnership aims to increase travel, tourism and cultural exchanges between Greece and Saudi Arabia, bringing more European tourists to Saudi Arabia.
Increasing tourism is part of the Saudi Kingdom’s national tourism strategy, which aims to provide a full range of services and benefits for tourists and to promote an environment conducive to current and future investment. Flights to Greece, in the beginning, will take off only from Riyadh and Jeddah, while other cities will be added in later stages.
Aegean Airlines is in good health and aims to end 2022 profitable along with expecting to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic with a record summer.
The Greek airline, a few weeks ago, announced it was interested in acquiring other carriers in Southeastern Europe, including Croatia Airlines. Aegean Vice President, Eftychios Vassilakis, said the carrier aims to strengthen its regional role in Southeast Europe through possible new acquisitions. In October OF last year, the airline bought a 51 percent stake in Romania’s Animawings.
Vincenzo graduated in 2019 in Mechanical Engineering with an aeronautical curriculum, focusing his thesis on Human Factors in aircraft maintenance. Currently, he is pursuing his master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Palermo, Italy. He combines his journalistic activities with his work as a Safety and Reliability Engineer at DMD Solutions.
