Cypriots flock to Athens as airlines maintain cheap flights

GOOD money for Olympic and Cyprus Airways and bad luck for those who want to travel to Athens for Easter, as all flights to the Greek capital are fully booked for the holiday weekend.

For the first time, the winter season and its cheaper fares have been extended from May to July, so travellers can still fly to Greece and back for just £80, Michalis Kythreotis, sales manager at Amathus, Olympic Airways’ representative in Cyprus, told the Cyprus Mail.

Olympic Airways this year had an increase 15 per cent increase in Easter bookings, compared to other years, he added.

"The result of the cheap fares is that airlines are booking a lot of flights and issuing a lot of tickets, and now with the Easter holidays, more and more people are going to Greece," Kythreotis said.

About 530 passengers are being flown to Greece every day by Olympic Airways, on flights that are fully booked. More would fly if more aircraft were available, Kythreotis added.

He said a lot of people would not make it to Greece this Easter, because everything had been fully booked from last Monday until Easter Sunday.

Cyprus Airways says it has laid on extra aircrafts to satisfy customer demand. The airline has scheduled six flights a day, rather than the usual three or four, to carry travellers to Greece during Holy Week, including 600 children going on school trips.

"People prefer travelling to Athens rather than spending their holidays at a Cyprus resort where they would spend about the same amount of money to stay at a hotel," said Olympic’s Kythreotis.

"A lot of people are still trying in vain to book tickets, and others are on the waiting list, but most of them have given up hope," he added.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.