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