Budget airline Ryanair announced on Wednesday that it will be reducing domestic flights across Greece.
Representatives have blamed the decision on Fraport Greece for increasing airport charges for the airline.
“Regrettably, current airport charges at the majority of Greek airports encourage peak-only services in the summer on international routes,” said Ryanair’s Sales and Marketing Manager for the Eastern Mediterranean, Nikolaos Lardis.
The airline’s Chief Commercial Officer, David O’Brien said they had appealed to ministers to drop the additional charges.
“We are not a philanthropic organisation. We wrote, as you know, to several ministers and we said look, drop the taxes in the winter, and we will try to deliver the traffic,” he said.
As a result the airline’s base in Chania, Crete will close, which will see the cancellation of four connections in the city to and from Katowice in Poland, Germany’s Memmingen, and Treviso and Vilnius in Venice.
As part of the move, there are plans to transfer two aircraft from Chania and Athens to bases in Germany, where Ryanair has decided to expand its services “where they can achieve superior utilisation on a year-round basis,” said Mr Lardis.
Services in Athens to and from Thessaloniki, Santorini and Mykonos will continue this summer as per usual.
