Greece Summer Lowdown: Parking Pain, Slot Stress, and Hidden Fees

Key Points

All Greek islands will be extremely busy again this summer. Athens too.
Very few slots are made available to BizAv flights, overnight parking is scarce, even quick turn arounds are extremely difficult in some cases.
At Level 3 airports, your filed flight plan must match the confirmed slot time within ±15 minutes, otherwise it will be suspended.
Watch out for extra fees at LGMK/Mykonos, LGKR/Corfu and LGKO/Kos.
Consider drop-and-go’s, with parking at airports on the Greek mainland, Cyprus, or Turkey.

There are loads of island airports in Greece, but there’s a special collection which are managed by a company called Fraport.

The 14 Greek airports managed by Fraport.

“Special” just because operating to these particular airports has become increasingly challenging since their privatisation in 2017. Fraport initially struggled to deal with providing parking to non-scheduled and business aviation, and new slot procedures were introduced to try to better manage the volume of requests being made.

How long can I park my aircraft on the islands?

Not long. There are two places to check how long you can stay on the ground at these airports – and you need to check both.

The first is the PPR Handbook Fraport have published which includes this info in handy chart form, plus a bunch of extra info about how to actually go about applying for PPR. The chart below shows the info for the 2025 summer season:

The second place to check is the Notams, and this applies to ALL Greek airports. With peak summer season coming in July/August, expect to see even more restrictive max-time-on-ground Notams get published.

Don’t get caught without a slot in Greece

Greece has brought back the Flight Plan Suspension (FLS) system for summer 2025. It applies to Level 3 coordinated airports – which includes most of the busy island destinations – you can which are Level 3 here.

If your flight plan is more than 15 minutes off your confirmed slot time, it will be automatically suspended.

Make sure you have a confirmed slot from HSCA – your handler will usually take care of this – and that your flight plan matches the slot time.

The slot ID must be included in Field 18 of your flight plan:

RMK/LGXXAxxxxxxxxx for arrivals
RMK/LGXXDxxxxxxxxx for departures.

Even if you’re flying VFR, a slot is still required if any part of the flight is under IFR.

If you can’t reach HSCA, you can contact Greek ATS at: +30 210 997 2656 (office) or +30 210 997 22654 (24/7)

This change is published in LGGG Notam A1535/25, effective from May 30 – July 9. We’ll see if it gets extended…

Watch out for extra fees!

There are some extra costs at three airports in the summer: LGMK/Mykonos, LGKR/Corfu and LGKO/Kos.

The short story is this: all BizAv flights have to use the dedicated GA Terminal at these airports in the summer months, where you will get charged an extra 2000 Euros per passenger-carrying sector flight (so if a flight has pax inbound and outbound, 4000 Euros will be charged). VAT is charged on top of this to non-EU operators.

It doesn’t matter which handler you use – they all quote the same costs for this.

There’s no mention of these charges in Fraport’s Airport Charges documents published on their site.

A note on LGAV/Athens

Once a haven for weary BizAv operators, at LGAV/Athens airport there always used to be a cosy spot on some remote parking stand for aircraft to stay for a few nights after dropping their passengers on one of the islands.

But those days are gone. In the Summer period (March 30 to Oct 25) LGAV/Athens is now a “Level 2” airport, meaning that slots are required. Unlike other Greek airports, you can only apply for these 7 days in advance (rather than 14). But the biggest problem is this – turnarounds will be limited to just 2 hours. And if you want longer parking, you can only apply for the required PPR one day in advance! Check here for more info on this.

Good options for parking?

In Greece, we’ve heard reports from OPSGROUP members on these ones: LGTS/Thessaloniki, LGIO/Ioannina, and LGKV/Kavala. In Cyprus, there’s LCPH/Paphos. And then there’s always the option of Turkish coastal airports, the likes of LTBJ/Izmir and LTFE/Bodrum.

Good options for parking.

Plus a couple more we heard about last year:

LGBL/Volos – A joint use air base 90nm north of Athens. We just relocated our aircraft there on our trip to Athens for around 9 days. Super easy in and out. Stayed at Volos town about 15 miles away. Limited operating days and hours so check notams. They have limited airline service also. Rental cars are available. All in all a great experience for storing our aircraft until the boss was ready to return to the US.

LGIR/Heraklion – We operated into LGIR a few days ago. Everything very easy and Skyserv did a really great job of taking care of our pax and us. Lots of nice hotels in the area around the city, some nice sights if you have some days off. Departure was also very smooth, catering, fuelling, gpu everything worked exactly as it should. The fees were also very moderate. LGIR is also a good candidate for parking if you can’t get it anywhere else.

And a couple of other airports which used to be okay options, but maybe aren’t so great anymore: LGRX/Araxos and LGSM/Samos. As reported by Universal handling: LGRX is very restrictive and not with so much space, I wouldn’t consider it as one of the first options, but desperate times call for desperate measures. LGSM was not so easy to approve last summer, they have also their morning peak a couple of days of the week but it is indeed a solution.

Know of any other good options? Let us know: news@ops.group

Greece Summer Lowdown: Parking Pain, Slot Stress, and Hidden Fees