Avoiding high FRAPORT and HANDLING costs in Greece

amingin wrote:

Today flew to Graz (LOWG). No handling required, walked to the GAT. Beautiful! I think I will pay sub 150 euros for 4T. No hassle, border is there, smiling, even though international flight are rare.

Welcome! Let me know next time!

LOWG is good ;)
Train, Bus, Taxi, Rental Cars, Supermarket, Coffeeshops and a good restaurant (€€€) with views of the field.

Gorgeous town with a mediterranen vibe, vineyards south, hiking north.

In usual times also daily airline to AMS, FRA, MUC, VIE, DUS, STR.

Parking is 20% of landing fee/24hrs. Fees are in 500kg increments up to 4000kg.
For 1000kg around parking is around 4€ per day.

I recommend to enter the GA briefing room (glass door left right before GAT security) and use the landline there for a free MET briefing from a AustroControl meteorologist!

Peter wrote:

Very slightly tongue in cheek

Peter, re your map of Corfu airport:

• what you show as “GA parking lots” is now marked as 6 marked slots in one line. When I was there it had everything from an LSA to medium bizjets. Once those 6 slots are taken, no more GA parking is what I was told by the handlers.
• an enormous new terminal has been built northwards behind your east side “Bizjet”, so I am pretty sure that is now for CAT
• your west side “Bizjet” is just an abandoned weed heap by the looks with a couple of busted planes on it rotting away.

Once those 6 slots are taken, no more GA parking is what I was told by the handlers.

Good to know Greece will never change

What I really think of that, I am not going to post (for a change) Actually I wonder if the guy’s brother is running Southampton EGHI?

Fortunately, Fraport made sure that the “manager” there has minimal “trouble” with GA, and I am sure he is very satisfied with that. I do think he missed a trick though: painting just 1 place would have made his job even easier. In fact I am amazed this “total workload solution” was overlooked.

I am glad I’ve “done Corfu” in the good old days; also it one of only ~2 places in Greece where the food today is consistently sh*t (Zakynthos is the other one, due to the target tourism profile marketing).

I wanted to fly to Corfu this year and got the no parking reply. Surely the airport was crowded due to high Corona traffic. Went to Italy (Bari) instead. Completely different story. Very customer oriented, not cheap but reasonably priced and I even got an airliner stand. I prefer to go to places where I am welcome so I am done with Corfu and probably the rest of Greece – even though I really like the country…
And I avoid Frankfurt for airline travel as well … not that this will change anything…

Corfu is nothing like the rest of Greece, fortunately. The airport is a major “Euro loan repayment extraction point” and the island is (normally) packed with tourists.

The easy way to fly to Greece and enjoy Greece is

• fly a plane with a decent range
• fly down to Croatia (100% GA friendly and everything works)
• fly to LGIO or LGST (LGST preferred if there is any cloud over LGIO, for reasons evident when you look at LGIO terrain)
• fly to any of the many small island airports – see here for some reports
• leave Greece via LGIO or LGST, back to Croatia
• for other popular islands (e.g. Santorini) use Easyjet; most of these have no avgas anyway (Samos is one exception) or simply don’t like aircraft (Mykonos).

LGKC Kithira is also a port of entry (but no fuel) and is doable from LDDU without a refuel (in a TB20, anyway).

The main challenge with Greece is the narrow opening timetables of most of the little island airports. These have pushed some people to using Fraport-ripoff airports because they have wide opening times. This issue has always been there.

Greece is easier to organise than many countries because nobody expects you to speak their language, so you can just phone up an airport in English. This makes a huge difference.

When I was at Kefalonia LGKF few days ago, handlers told me that the traffic was practically 2 flights from/to Athens daily. I guess it’s a bit better on some other Greek islands (Zakinthos, Mykonos or Santorini) but it’s far from full return of tourism. Obviously nobody thinks that GA could contribute in increasing the numbers. I’m pretty sure I’ll fly to few more Greek islands in following years, entering via Ioannina LGIO and then continuing towards non-Fraport islands exiting again via LGIO or some airport at Crete.

What about military airfields in Greece? Is it easy to obtain PPR for those? Do they have low fees and/or Avgas/Mogas? Thinking of Skiros (LGSY), Kalamata (LGKL), Preveza (LGPZ), Dekelia (LGTT) etc. As far as I heard (and read on this forum), Megara (LGMG) should be easy to do and not too expensive for external airplanes?

I would love to fly to Greece someday, but it seems like a very big, complicated, and expensive organizational job. This topic doesn’t make it easier, even though the great information provided here. Croatia is also beautiful and fits my needs so far.

What about military airfields in Greece? Is it easy to obtain PPR for those? Do they have low fees and/or Avgas/Mogas? Thinking of Skiros (LGSY), Kalamata (LGKL), Preveza (LGPZ), Dekelia (LGTT) etc. As far as I heard (and read on this forum), Megara (LGMG) should be easy to do and not too expensive for external airplanes?

Last time I asked military airfield (I think it was Kalamata) it was 21 days PPR. Megara is easy but it’s not port of entry.