carnarvon

I have not been to ATH for ages and one of my clients is asking for advice.

He wants to fly MRS/ATH/PAS (Paros).

There are no good connection with one airline/alliance so he is considering self-connecting in ATH, coming with AF into ATH.

1) Hand-luggage only.

How is ATH airport organised for domestic connections? Any need to clear security again?

Any hint at how much time to allow between arrival at 10h35 and departure in case of hand-luggage only?

Any recommendation as to which airline to choose for ATH/PAS (Olympic, Aegean , Sky Express)?

2) Checked luggage.

How much time would you consider “safe” to retrieve luggage and check in again?

Thank you very much in advance.

BA6948

1- You can connect between domestic and Schengen without clearing security again. Arrivals from domestic and Schengen will drop passengers directly in the gate area. I would advise 2 hours though at least. This not because of Athens but delays are growing at CDG at the moment so 2 hours between flights should be ok.
2- you’ll have the choice between Olympic or Skyexpress. I would go with the airline that provides the best connection and better pricing although AF sells flights now to Greek islands via ATH with Skyexpress. My favourite is Olympic but that’s a bit biased.

carnarvon

Thank you. I forgot to mention this would be in August.

So, hand-luggage only : 2 hour for connection
Checked-luggage? 4 hours?

P.S. AF website did not offer MRS/PAS with Skyexpress when I looked. I will double check.

jerry_greece

By the way it's PAS (and not POS, which would be far awayyyy).

I think that flight from MRS-ATH is usually in the morning, meaning that will most likely not have any accumilated delay. It will normally go to remote stands, meaning that arrivals will be bused to arrivals which is exactly at the area of Schengen departure gates and more specifically flights to PAS will depart from that zone. The walk to the gate would be something between 1 and 4 min. So hand-luggage only, i would go for the 2 hours indeed.

- In theory, AFKLM has an interline agreement with GQ but they mention only flights from CDG and AMS. So that's a pity. Luggage will complicate things since Athens is going to be crazy busy in August, meaning that luggage delivery might be late and then I would expect long queues either at GQ or A3 (OA) check-in desks. The good thing, is when things so south, check-in agents will start shouting for pax. with imminent departure times to come forward. Security might also be a bottleneck. So something like 4 hours might be safe there.

Other things to consider:

- OA has approx. 9 (even 10 some days?) flights to PAS, so there might be more possibilites to get on a later flight (if availabilty and ). GQ on the other hand has up to 4 flights a day and they are notorious for their lack of customer service.
- OA has a nice mobile/web-checkin. GQ's system allows for web-checkin only (not mobile) and some pax. have issues with their BPs scanned at security check-points. Of course, your client will already be land-side.

Practically speaking, if arrival from MRS is at 10.35, the next GQ flight is 15.45 (quite much time) but next OA flight is 13.00. So maybe that solves your dilemma?

carnarvon

Thank you very much for all the details, and the tip about GQ.

Indeed, not offered from MRS, but through CDG as you point out. It makes the trip longer BUT : departure from MRS to CDG at 10:00 which is more civilised than 7:00 from MRS to ATH. And no issue with luggage transfer. So, one can hesitate.

Yes, PAS not POS...<blush>

carnarvon

Looking further, I bumped into a return flight PAS/ATH/MRS... Looks like the agreement is not all set yet...

Will enquire further...

Thank you again. You gave me good ideas 💡