CY announces more fare cuts

By Jean Christou

FROM MONDAY Cyprus Airways (CY) will be offering further fare reductions in addition to those already announced for London and Athens.

While new fares for Thessalonica will be based on a similar system to those of Athens, around 50 per cent off certain flights, CY’s other European destinations have been divided into zones.

Zone A includes London, Manchester, Birmingham, Amsterdam and Paris with flights starting from £150 plus taxes. Night flights to Heathrow and all flights to Stanstead will start from £130 plus taxes. Pensioners’ fares in zone A will cost £130 plus taxes for night flights and £140 plus taxes for regular flights.

Zone B includes Brussels, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Zurich, Geneva, Milan, Rome and Moscow, which will have a special flat rate fare of £130 plus taxes and £125 plus taxes for pensioners.

Zone C covers Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg and Warsaw with a reduced special rate of £110 plus taxes and the same for pensioners.

Cut-price fares for Athens, announced last week apply to the 7am and 7pm daily flights. The 9.30am and 4pm flight fares will be slashed to £79 plus taxes. Pensioner fares will be priced at £70 across the board. The national carrier operates five flights to Athens daily and the usual fare is £139 plus taxes.

Fares to Thessalonica will start at £99 plus taxes and at £89 plus taxes for pensioners, while the cost of a flight to Heraklion will be £69 plus taxes and £59 for those over 63.

All of the new rates represent approximately a 50 per cent reduction but come with a barrage of restrictions. They are non refundable, although they may be upgraded at an extra charge, the airline said.

The special fares only apply to seats left available after the higher-fare seats are sold. Higher-fare tickets carry fewer restrictions and are more flexible. The new fares will have to be paid for when the booking is made and require a three-day stopover at the specified destinations.

The reduced fares will apply from October 14 to March 31 next year.

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.