Back to 1974: Nicosia's international airport

 An abandoned Cyprus Airways Hawker-Siddeley Trident (Picture: Dickelbers/Wikipedia)

Shortly after I posted this story about Vilnius being, possibly, the EU capital with the least air connections, Alex, a friend of mine from Cyprus, pointed out the existence in Nicosia, Cyprus, of an airport that has not been in use since 1974.

(Note: Nicosia's old airport is not to be mistaken with Cyprus main international airport at Larnaca, about 50km away, on the coast, an airport I had the chance to speak about a few months ago)

This story piqued my curiosity, fortunately a quick online search yielded some interesting results:

Nicosia's abandoned airport is just West of the city center, right in the middle of the UN buffer zone that separates the Greek and Turkish sides of the island. It is precisely this latent conflict that is at root of the current state of abandondment.

The airport itself was at the frontline in the summer of 1974 and was the episode of a botched attempt by Greek airborne troops to provide assistance to Greek cypriots during the fight.

Besides these tragic circumstances, Nicosia's old international airport offers a really fascinating glimpse of the World of air travel as it used to be in the 1970s. As it happens all along the buffer zone, time seems to have stopped in 1974, it is possibly the closest you can get to a time travel experience.

The wikipedia entry has some really stunning pictures (I repost a sample here), Cypriot photographer Andros Efstathiou is also exhibiting his work about the airport.

                                                         Airport fittings, 1970s-style (Picture: Dickelbers/Wikipedia)

For obvious reasons Nicosia's airport is currently off-limits to everyone but the UN troops that patrol de buffer zone, however, I think that, whenever the Cypriot conflict is resolved, if the airport is preserved and open to the public it will make a must-visit attraction for aviation enthusiasts from all over the World!

PS: If you like aviation history, you might check this other story about Belgrade's aviation museum!

The frustrated merger Olympic-Aegean and the competitive situation in the Greek air travel market

The Olympic-Aegean merger, unlikely to happen anytime soon

The Greek aviation industry has been flying through turbulent times in recent years and one of the consequences has been the proposed merger between the country's two main airlines: Olympic Airlines and Aegean Airlines.

But it looks like industry consolidation will have to wait, since this merger has recently been blocked by the European Union on the basis that such a merger would bring about a virtual monopoly on Greece's domestic air routes. The people at Anna Aero have been doing some research on the competitive environment in the Greek aviation market. In a couple of articles (beware if you click on the links from work, as they contain some animations and sounds!) they have assessed what the market share of the merged airline would be, it would account for nearly 95% of the Greek domestic routes, but the situation would be significantly different on European routes, were it would be competing with foreign airlines in practically all city pairs.

They have also looked at what is the market concentration at other European markets. Greece would be at the top of the table after the merger, but France is, already now, not far behind. Although it is also true that overland communications might be easier in France, that has a well developed high-speed rail network and that Greece's many islands lack a fast transportation alternative.



The Greek aviation sector has been transformed and has got a face-lift recently but the islands remain dependent on the same old links to the mainland

When reading these articles other considerations come to my mind, maybe material for further analysis, for example, when considering the long-haul market. There is currently no Greek airline flying long-haul (these were large loss-makers for the old Olympic) and there aren't many international airlines flying long-haul into Athens either, so the offer is quite limited. A merged Greek airline would possibly have a better chance to do them, increasing capacity on this market segment.

Another point to consider is whether the resulting airline would join Star Alliance, of which Aegean is already a member, or Sky Team, as Olympic was on track to do. So how the competitive analysis in European routes would vary once taking into account code-sharing agreements and the alliance's partners routes?

In any case, the latest news is the an appeal has been filed regarding the blocking of the merger, so this story might go on for still quite a while...

Planespotting at Larnaca airport, Cyprus

I recently made a stopover at Larnaca's new airport, in Cyprus. I was positively impressed by the new terminal, that opened recently next to the old Larnaca airport facilities. The airport is currently handling over 5 million passengers a year, and there are plans to expand capacity to 9 million, it is managed by a French-led consortium, Hermes Airports, made up of Bouygues Batiment International (22%) Egis Projects (20%), the Cyprus Trading Corporation (a local retail group-10%), Iacovou Brothers (a local contractor-10%), Hellenic Mining (10%), Vancouver Airport Services (10%), Ireland's Dublin Airport Authority (Aer Rianta International) (10%), Charilaos Apostolides (a local construction company-5%) and Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (3%). This group also manages Cyprus' other airport at Paphos,

Besides its amplitude and luminosity, one of the things I liked is that at the tip of the terminal there is a large glass wall that lets you keep track of all the planes that land and take off. It is not a high-traffic airport but nevertheless you could do some interesting plane-spotting.


A colourful A-320 of Swiss charter company Edelweiss Air, getting ready to return a load of tan Swiss holidaymakers to Zurich




An Aeroflot A-320 arriving from Moscow. Aeroflot serves the large Russian community in Cyprus, which is also an important holiday destination for Russians.


A Eurocypria Boeing 737, see our previous entry on this Cypriot charter company


Aegean A-320 departing for Thessaloniki, Greece


A Cyprus Airways A-330, the company uses these aircraft in its London Heathrow route


A British Airways Boeing 767 departing for London Heathrow. Besides being a former British possession, Cyprus is a traditional holiday destination for British tourists

By invitation: Eurocypria is pulled from the Brink

"Continuing with our series of reports about the airline market in Southeast Europe, Alexander Apostolides reporting from Cyprus"


Foto by by Andy_Mitchell_UK (from Flickr under CC License)

In other news the much smaller Eurocypria has just been saved from bankruptcy from the Cypriot parliament. Eurocypria, a charter flight operator, has found its self in severe financial distress just six years after the company was restructured. The CEO, Eletherios Ioannou, warned the Cypriot parliament that unless the parliament agreed to an immediate increase of the share capital by 35 million euros the company would close by last Friday, since it needed to repay debts of 28 million. The government agreed to the demand, and refused to accept the resignation of the CEO, despite the anger in the local press on the revelation of greatly inflated wages of Eurocypria’s staff: pilots, ground staff where grossly overpaid, with a third of the company earning more that 99,000 euros a year

The largest opposition party, DISI, has come out against the deal, with vice chairman Averof Neophytou, stating that “the government is trying to convince parliament that Eurocypria is viable and the Cypriot taxpayer should invest €35 million” but “If they really believe in what they are telling us, it would be very easy to convince their former colleagues, either to renew the loans or the creditors can participate in increasing the share capital.”. The most criticized aspect of the deal is the fact that Eurocypria seems to be moving out of the charter business and will start to offer direct flights to Kenya and Teheran from the new Larnaca airport.
European rules may block the deal since the local government owned rival, Cyprus Airways, which was wrangling with Eurocypria over who will remain as the republic’s sole carrier, seems to be behind the anonymous a legal suit placed on February 17 with the European Commission regarding the proposed financing of Eurocypria. The news of the possible imminent collapse of the charter flight carrier has rocked confidence of the Cypriot hotel business, since many tourists in Cyprus still travel with charter flights operated by Eurocypria, and dampened the positive spirit created for the upcoming tourist season by the the opening of the new Larnaca airport

Alexander Apostolides

By invitation: The upcoming merger of Olympic Air and Aegean Air

The economic crisis has led to increasing efforts for concentration in the area. Olympic Airlines, the private re-incarnation of the defunct Olympic Airways, has competed talks with Greek rival Aegean Airlines for a proposed merger.

Olympic Air is mostly owned by Dubai sponsored MIG group, which has made substantial inroads in the Greek economy, with control of Marfin Laiki bank, OTE telecoms and Panathinaikos football team. The Dubai link is not apparently clear as Andreas Vgenopoulos, the CEO of MIG, has tried to disassociate his connection/dependence with Dubai sovereign funds, but such links where exposed when MIG took over the second largest bank in Cyprus, the Laiki Popular Bank. Olympic Air retained only the most lucrative lines of the old government-sponsored Olympic Airways, with Aegean Air picking up a substantial part of the remaining domestic flights.

The deal is still being worked out: some argue that the deal is typical of all MIG, whereby Olympic Air will issue new shares to take 55.3% of Aegean air. This deal seems only to be to the interest of the large shareholders who are the power behind Olympic (Vgenopoulos) and Aegan (Vasilakis / Laskarides).

The two companies still need to jump through many hoops to make this official: the Greek Competition Authority will look into this, followed by the European Competition Committee. The issues of concern to each authority will be different. The Greek competition authority is concerned that some rights given to Olympic air in relation rights owned by the government as the owner of the defunct Olympic airways will be threatened, while a large amount of domestic flights are at risk of cancellation, a great concern at country with the largest amount of islands in Europe. The European Competition authority is mostly concerned with the prohibition under the deal made between the EU and the Greek government that prevented the change of the share capital structure of the resurrected Olympic air, as well as regional competition issues.

What I am mostly concerned about is at the negative repercussion of South Eastern European passengers. As a passenger the merger will almost certainly lead to an increase in fares and in the reduction of routes in South-East Europe. Eletherios Venizelos airport in Athens is in the process of turning itself into a true regional hub for the area. Local carriers such as Olympic, Aegean, Cyprus Airways, Tarom and Jat Airways where linking the region with destinations such as Johannesburg, Singapore, New York, Tashkent and Bangkok through Athens. This was made possible by the reduction of regional flights due to the increased competition. The appearance of Aegean Air led to a substantial decrease in prices, with the price of a flight from Larnaca to Athens falling by as much as 100 euros, while the frequency of flights increased by a factor of four. The new company will almost certainly reduce the number of daily flights with the resulting increase in prices, forcing South-European intercontinental travelers to have to fly much further for their connections.

Alexander Apostolides

Presenting Alexander Apostolides, new guest writer reporting on the airline industry in Southeast Europe

When I recently started this blog the plan was to share with the readers interesting airline and aviation stories from around the world. One of the areas where interesting things are happening in this sector is South Eastern Europe, that occupies the strategic space between the traditional large airline markets of Western Europe and the emerging airline hubs in the Middle East. In what regards the airline and aviation sector this is definitely a part of the World I would keep on the radar. With this aim, Alex Apostolides is joining this project as guest writer, reporting on the airline business in his native Cyprus and the whole surrounding region. I give him a warm welcome to this blog and I hope you will enjoy his posts.