Booking Cheap Flights to Greece

Taking Advantage of Charter Flights to Greece

Some words of warning about Greek aviation law. This specifies that a charter ticket must be a return of no fewer than three days and no more than four weeks, and must be accompanied by an accommodation voucher for at least the first few nights of your stay. Check that your ticket satisfies these conditions or you could be refused entry. In practice, the accommodation voucher has become a formality; it has to name an existing hotel, but you are not necessarily expected to use it. As for the time limit, a cheap return flight can often prove advantageous, even just using the outbound half.

Booking Scheduled Flights to Greece

The advantages of scheduled flights are that they can be booked well in advance, remain valid for three months and sometimes longer, and involve none of the restrictions on charters. As with charters, discount fares on scheduled flights are available from most high street travel agents.

The biggest choice of scheduled flights is with the Greek national carrier, Olympic Airways, which offers the choice of Athens , Thessaloniki and, depending on season, some of the major island airports. Olympic shares the UK-to-Athens routes with British Airways and Virgin Airlines. Since the introduction of Virgin to the route in 1994, the other two airlines have had to sharpen their pencil on fare prices, and some extremely good deals are available depending on departure dates.

For maximum flexibility EasyJet fly a twice-daily service from London Luton to Athens. Inexpensive tickets can be purchased, one-way, therefore enabling you to elect your return date at will.

Pros and Cons of Scheduled Flights

Pros

• Flexibility - tickets can be booked well in advance and remain valid for up to three months.
• Availability - there are numerous flights to Greece each day with a choice of good quality aeroplanes with the world's leading airlines.
• Guarantees - scheduled flights in the main will leave and arrive on time.

Cons

• Costs - even discounted scheduled tickets can be substantially more expensive than the popular charter tickets.
• Departures - as scheduled flights mainly leave from the larger UK airports, e.g. Heathrow, you may not necessarily be able to fly from your local airport.
• Variety - charter flights, being more tourism-related, are likely to operate direct flights to the islands, whereas the scheduled operators mainly serving business needs primarily fly to the larger towns, e.g. Athens, Thessaloniki.