Volotea, which specialises in connecting small to mid-sized European cities, has announced its plans for expansion in Greece with eight new routes and strong growth plans for 2023.
Volotea will launch eight new routes this year to France, Italy, and Spain from key Greek airports. Two routes will operate from Athens to Toulouse and Cagliari, and two from Santorini to Bilbao and Palermo.
One new route will operate from Heraklion to Bordeaux, Rhodes to Nantes, Kalamata to Nantes, and Karpathos to Naples.
Athens base
The airline’s largest operations are based out of Athens Airport, where it is poised to offer 17 destinations and increase its seat capacity by 33% in 2023.
Volotea, which opened its base in Athens in 2018 with two Airbus A319 aircraft, is also the fastest-growing airline at Athens Airport with 3,800 flights currently on sale. This represents a 23% increase for the carrier.
The recently announced routes reinforce the carrier’s continuing growth in the Greek region.
Carlos Muñoz, CEO and Founder of Volotea, added, “Our plans for this year show that our growth trajectory is stronger than ever, and we are committed to expanding our network across Europe, with Greece as a vital part of that strategy.”
“We are very proud of our partnership with AEGEAN, the largest Greek airline whose values and priorities align closely with ours.”
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“We look forward to continuing our work together in our mutual commitment towards providing exceptional service and expanding connectivity at competitive prices,” he concluded.
Volotea will offer more than 680,000 seats (+33% vs 2022) at Athens Airport this year and more than 1.4 million seats to and from the whole of Greece (+ 12% vs 2022).
Ioanna Papadopoulou, Director of Communications & Marketing at Athens Airport, noted the importance of the airline’s presence in Athens, saying, “Volotea has been an invaluable partner for Athens International Airport since 2015 when they commenced their highly successful operations to and from our city.”
Papadopoulou noted that the airline would operate its biggest ever Athens network during the upcoming summer season, and also pointed out the strong results produced by the carrier’s code share agreement with Greek airline AEGEAN.
Code share agreement with AEGEAN
The airline’s presence in Greece was further strengthened by the establishment of codeshare agreement signed in 2021 with AEGEAN, the leading Greek airline.
In 2023, 32 AEGEAN routes will be offered by Volotea, and 46 Volotea routes will be offered by AEGEAN. Including 15 routes that are offered individually by both airlines, the total number will reach 90 routes.
Eftichios Vassilakis, Chairman of AEGEAN also affirmed the success of the partnership, saying: “We are excited our codeshare agreement with Volotea, initiated two years ago is proving productive and we are expanding it by adding new routes and frequencies particularly ex France and Italy.”
“In 2023 AEGEAN will operate to 161 destinations in 46 countries with 264 direct routes and with 76 aircraft, 22 of which are the newly delivered Airbus 320/321 neo aircraft.”
Overall, in 2023, Volotea will offer nearly 12 million seats and operate more than 400 routes in 16 countries in its entire network.
