Aegean Airlines ticket offers help to beat slowdown

Aegean Airlines experienced turbulence in the domestic market over the last three weeks due to the shuttering of banks and the capital controls, in contrast with the carrier’s exceptionally good first half of the year.

Greece’s main airline said on Friday that the last 20 days have seen a significant slowdown in bookings for both its domestic and international flights, not only for July but also for the coming months.

However, despite the cost, the company’s decision to offer special deals seems to have reversed the negative impact. In combination with the agreement reached between the government and the country’s creditors, this move seems to have helped bookings return to growth, at an annual rate of almost 30 percent so far this month, though only in Aegean’s international network, which has expanded significantly.

In the first six months of 2015 Aegean recorded a 15 percent passenger increase  across its network, carrying a total of 4,962,537 passengers – 630,000 more than in the first half of last year.

The growth rate in its international flights amounted to 20 percent (over 2.4 million passengers) – three times higher than the overall growth rate of 6.7 percent in arrivals from abroad, according to the Association of Hellenic Tourism Enterprises (SETE).