LONDON – UAE national flag carrier Emirates is activating a new codeshare partnership with Greece’s largest carrier Aegean, offering business and leisure travellers more international options, with Emirates’ 168 route network, which continues to grow
Codeshare Opens up New Services For Greek Travellers
The partnership will also bring the Greek Islands closer to the world. The eight destinations via Athens can be booked either with Emirates or Aegean under one booking, which creates a seamless journey between Dubai and popular destinations in Greece including Kerkyra, Chania, Irakleion, Mikonos, Thira, Rhodes, Thessaloniki and Alexandropoulos.
Under these exciting codeshares, Greek Airlines will place its flight code on Emirates-operated flights between Athens and Dubai for passengers to be able to serve easy connections to Dubai and within Greece.
This agreement will start in October 2022 when Emirates and Aegean will fully commit to working with each other on the codeshare partnership. Not only will destinations in Greece benefit from the codeshares, but other European regional destinations, via Athens, such as Bucharest, Belgrade and Naples, and New York Newark to Athens flights which are operated by Emirates.
It is not clear as to whether or not the codeshare will allow customers to share flight miles with the Emirates Skyward reward club, but this is something that might be added later should the carriers continue to expand on their current agreement.
Greece is One of Emirates’ Most Popular destinations
Emirates serves Athens with the Boeing 777-300ER with a 12 times-weekly service and is expecting to see a larger increase in the daily load factors when the new codeshare agreement begins
Emirates has more than 26 codeshare agreements with different airlines, and two rail partners as well as 110 interline partners all over the globe, offering seamless travel to passengers all over the world.
What has probably prompted the two airlines to go into partnership, is that there is an increase in demand for the Greek Islands, causing Emirates to forge codeshares with Aegean. Emirates’ smallest fleet is the 777-300ER, discounting the 737MAX’s from FlyDubai, which is not economically viable and often times not practical to operate to smaller Greek destinations, hence this partnership.