Thessaloniki International Airport

From Phantis
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Thessaloniki International Airport, "Macedonia" (Greek: Κρατικός Αερολιμένας Θεσσαλονίκης "Μακεδονία", Kratikós Aeroliménas "Makedonía") (IATA: SKG (SaloniKa Greece; ICAO LGTS) is located about 15 km SE of the city centre of Thessaloniki at Mikra, close to the suburb of Thermaikos and the municipalities of Kalamaria, Pylaia and Therma. The airport is the largest state owned and operated airport in the country. It opened in 1930 and today it's the third busiest airport in Greece[1], serving almost 4 million passengers annually. It is linked to the city centre by a 24-hour OASTH bus service (No. 78). There is a master plan for a major expansion of the airport, including a new much bigger terminal building that could accommodate 9 million passengers per year. Currently the expansion of one runway into the sea is underway, in order for the airport to serve long haul flights. It has two runways (10-28 & 16-34) and two taxiways. There are 22 stands for wide bodied aircraft and about 20 for light ones.

Airlines and destinations

  • Aegean Airlines (Athens, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Heraklion, Rhodes, Kos, Larnaca, Munich, Mytilene, Stuttgart)
  • Aerosvit Airlines (Kiev-Boryspol)
  • airberlin (Berlin-Tegel, Cologne/Bonn, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Erfurt, Hamburg, Hanover, Leipzig/Halle, Munich, Münster/Osnabrück, Nuremberg, Paderborn/Lippstadt) [seasonal]
  • Air Malta (Malta) [seasonal]
  • Air One (Milan-Malpensa)
  • Alitalia (Rome-Fiumicino)
  • Austrian Airlines (Vienna)
  • British Airways (London-Gatwick)
  • Carpatair (Timişoara)
  • Centralwings (Warsaw, Gdańsk, Cracow, Poznań, Katowice)
  • Cyprus Airways (Larnaca, Paphos, Paris-Charles de Gaulle)
  • Czech Airlines (Prague)
  • easyJet (Berlin-Schönefeld, Dortmund, London-Gatwick)
  • Edelweiss Air (Zürich)
  • Elbrus Avia (Nalchik)
  • First Choice Airways (Birmingham, London-Gatwick, Manchester)
  • FlyLAL (Vilnius)
  • Israir (Tel Aviv) [seasonal]
  • Germanwings (Cologne/Bonn, Stuttgart)
  • Jat Airways (Belgrade)
  • Karat (Anapa)
  • KrasAir](Moscow-Domodedovo)
  • Kuban Airlines (Krasnodar)
  • Malév Hungarian Airlines (Budapest)
  • Olympic Airlines
  • Rossiya (Moscow)
  • SkyEurope (Bratislava, Prague, Vienna)
  • Swiss International Air Lines (Zürich)
  • TAROM (Bucharest-Otopeni)
  • Thomsonfly (Birmingham, Bristol, East Midlands, London-Gatwick, London-Luton, Manchester, Newcastle)
  • TUIfly (Düsseldorf, Munich, Stuttgart)
  • Ural Airlines (Ekaterinburg) [seasonal]
  • VIM Airlines (Moscow-Domodedovo)

Incidents

  • December 17, 1997, A Yakovlev Yak-42 of Aerosvit Airlines, operating the route from Odessa, Ukraine to Thessaloniki, lost contact with the airport's air traffic control and during the second attempt the aircraft crashed in the Pierian mountains, near Mount Olympus. A total of 70 people, passengers and crew, 41 of which were Greeks, were killed.
  • On July 4, 2000, HA-LCR, a chartered MALÉV Flight 260 Tu-154 landed on its belly. The crew had forgotten to lower the undercarriage and the plane skidded 400 metres (440 yards) on the runway. Thanks to the plane's robust construction and the engines' high position, the plane was able to become airborne again as the pilots applied full throttle. It circled while the crew lowered the undercarriage and landed safely. There were no injuries. It was considered uneconomical to repair the aircraft.

References

External links

A portion of content for this article is credited to Wikipedia. Content under GNU Free Documentation License(GFDL)