# Chania International Airport

Chania International Airport "Daskalogiannis" (IATA: CHQ, ICAO: LGSA) is an international airport located near Souda Bay on the Akrotiri peninsula of the Greek island of Crete, serving the city of Chania, 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) away. It is a gateway to western Crete for an increasing number of tourists. The airport is named after Daskalogiannis, a Cretan rebel against Ottoman rule in the 18th century, and is a joint civil–military airport. It is the sixth-busiest airport in Greece.

## History

The focus on civil aviation for the west of Crete has not always been on the current location. It was the airport of Maleme that served civil flights up to 1959, and dating back to the end of Second World War.
In 1959, this activity was transferred to the military airport of Souda. In 1974, the airport also began to serve international flights. Because of insufficient capacity, there was the need for a new terminal building. Eventually, in 1996, the new terminal was ready, measuring a surface area of 14,650 square metres (157,700 sq ft), with 6 aircraft stands in front. It has a design capacity of 1.35 million passengers per year. In 2000, it was officially named Ioannis Daskalogiannis.
The airport is also intensively used as a military airfield by the Hellenic Air Force.
In December 2015, the privatisation of Chania International Airport and 13 other regional airports of Greece was finalised with the signing of the agreement between the Fraport AG/Copelouzos Group joint venture and the state privatisation fund. According to the agreement, the joint venture will operate the 14 airports (including Chania International Airport) for 40 years as of 11 April 2017.
In June 2018 Fraport Greece completed the new aircraft layouts, which are now using push back to double the parking space. The passenger safety area has been expanded, the number of hand baggage scanners from 5 to 8, the duty-free store space trebled from 400 sq.m. to 1,200 sq. meters, the VIP space moved to increase the number of boarding gates from 14 to 16 and the dividing walls in the departure halls were removed in order to create a space of 3,000 sq. meters. A new sewage pumping station was built, and the network (approximately 3.5 km) was connected to the municipal network. Electromechanical installations, including new motor control centres (MCCs), wiring, lighting, and electrical panels, were optimized. The apron lighting was upgraded, and the water closets (WCs) were renovated to increase the number of toilets in the non-Schengen area. Additionally, the escalator was relocated to better utilize the available space.
On June 10, 2018, Air Force One carrying U.S. President Donald Trump stopped for refuelling in Chania during Trump's flight from the G7 meeting in Quebec to the meeting in Singapore with the leader of North Korea Kim Jong-un.

## Fraport Greece's investment plan

On 22 March 2017, Fraport Greece presented its master plan for the 14 Greek regional airports, including Chania International Airport.
Immediate actions that will be implemented at the airports as soon as Fraport Greece takes over operations, before the summer of 2019:
* General clean-up
* Improving lighting, marking of airside areas
* Upgrading sanitary facilities
* Enhancing services and offering a new free Internet connection (WiFi)
* Implementing works to improve fire safety in all the areas of the airports
* Rearranging the terminal's internal utilization
* Rearranging the departure gate lounge
* Expanding the security control area
* HBS (Hold Baggage Screening Systems) inline screening
* Expanding the waste water treatment plant or connection to municipal service
* Reorganizing the apron area
* Refurbishing the airside pavement
* 25 percent increase in the number of departure gates (from 8 to 10)
* Doubling the number of security-check lanes (from 4 to 8)

## Airlines and destinations

The following airlines operate regular scheduled and charter flights at Chania Airport:
| Airlines | Destinations |
| Aegean Airlines | Athens, Thessaloniki Seasonal: Rhodes (begins 14 April 2025), Tel Aviv |
| Air Serbia | Seasonal: Belgrade |
| Animawings | Seasonal: Bucharest–Otopeni |
| Austrian Airlines | Seasonal: Vienna |
| Braathens International Airways | Seasonal charter: Gothenburg, Östersund Stockholm-Arlanda |
| British Airways | Seasonal: London–Heathrow |
| Brussels Airlines | Seasonal: Brussels |
| Condor | Seasonal: Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg (resumes 3 May 2025), Leipzig/Halle, Munich |
| Discover Airlines | Seasonal: Frankfurt, Munich |
| easyJet | Seasonal: Amsterdam Basel/Mulhouse Berlin, Bristol, Glasgow, London–Gatwick, London–Luton, Lyon, Manchester, Milan–Malpensa, Nice |
| Edelweiss Air | Seasonal: Zurich |
| Eurowings | Seasonal: Düsseldorf, Graz, Hamburg, Stuttgart |
| Finnair | Seasonal: Helsinki |
| flydubai | Seasonal: Dubai–International (begins 23 June 2025) |
| Israir Airlines | Seasonal: Tel Aviv |
| Jet2.com | Seasonal: Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds/Bradford, London–Stansted, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne |
| Luxair | Seasonal: Luxembourg |
| Marabu | Seasonal: Hamburg, Munich |
| Neos | Seasonal: Milan-Malpensa (begins 24 May 2025) |
| Norwegian Air Shuttle | Seasonal: Bergen, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Stockholm–Arlanda |
| Ryanair | Paphos, Thessaloniki Seasonal: Athens, Bergamo, Birmingham, Bologna, Bournemouth (resumes 2 June 2025), Bucharest–Otopeni, Budapest, Charleroi, Dublin, East Midlands, Gdańsk, Hahn, Kraków, Leeds/Bradford, London–Stansted, Malta, Manchester, Marseille, Memmingen, Naples, Newcastle upon Tyne, Nuremberg, Pisa, Poznań, Rome–Fiumicino, Sofia, Stockholm–Arlanda, Tel Aviv (begins 1 June 2025), Treviso, Vienna, Warsaw–Modlin, Weeze, Wrocław |
| Scandinavian Airlines | Seasonal: Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm–Arlanda Seasonal charter: Aalborg, Bergen, Bodø, Gothenburg, Haugesund, Kristiansand, Stavanger, Tromsø, Trondheim |
| Sky Express | Athens Seasonal charter: Brno (begins 8 June 2025) |
| Smartwings | Seasonal: Bratislava (begins 26 May 2025), Prague Seasonal charter: Poznan (begins 1 June 2025), Debrecen |
| Sunclass Airlines | Seasonal charter: Billund, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Malmö, Oslo, Stavanger, Stockholm–Arlanda, Trondheim |
| Transavia | Seasonal: Amsterdam, Lyon (begins 20 April 2025), Paris–Orly |
| TUI Airways | Seasonal: Birmingham, London–Gatwick, Manchester |
| TUI fly Belgium | Seasonal: Brussels, Ostend/Bruges |
| TUI fly Netherlands | Seasonal: Amsterdam |
| TUI fly Nordic | Seasonal charter: Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Norrköping, Oslo, Stockholm–Arlanda |
| Tus Airways | Seasonal: Larnaca |
| Wizz Air | Seasonal: Cluj-Napoca, Vienna, Warsaw–Chopin |

## Traffic figures

The data are from Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) until 2016, and from 2017 and later from the official website of the airport.
* Year
* Passengers
* Domestic
* International
* Total
* 1994
* 204,360
* 621,986
* 826,346
* 1995
* 220,910
* 669,516
* 890,426
* 1996
* 244,146
* 587,106
* 831,252
* 1997
* 301,471
* 622,689
* 924,160
* 1998
* 292,504
* 676,687
* 969,191
* 1999
* 414,429
* 816,045
* 1,230,474
* 2000
* 515,093
* 901,710
* 1,416,803
* 2001
* 395,864
* 1,033,118
* 1,428,982
* 2002
* 331,521
* 1,053,058
* 1,384,579
* 2003
* 413,541
* 1,066,112
* 1,479,653
* 2004
* 382,224
* 1,064,153
* 1,446,377
* 2005
* 401,141
* 1,111,628
* 1,512,769
* 2006
* 437,403
* 1,323,556
* 1,760,959
* 2007
* 514,318
* 1,368,516
* 1,882,834
* 2008
* 522,658
* 1,343,923
* 1,866,581
* 2009
* 575,687
* 1,219,779
* 1,795,466
* 2010
* 468,279
* 1,186,585
* 1,654,864
* 2011
* 449,211
* 1,325,497
* 1,774,708
* 2012
* 397,661
* 1,435,313
* 1,832,974
* 2013
* 379,280
* 1,699,577
* 2,078,857
* 2014
* 578,286
* 1,869,280
* 2,447,566
* 2015
* 827,190
* 1,875,093
* 2,702,283
* 2016
* 881,031
* 2,085,666
* 2,966,697
* 2017
* 831,324
* 2,111,085
* 3,042,409
* 2018
* 646,723
* 2,361,964
* 3,008,687
* 2019
* 672,945
* 2,310,597
* 2,983,542
* 2020
* 295.385
* 408.097
* 703.482
* 2021
* 454,298
* 1,340,938
* 1,795,236
* 2022
* 678,845
* 2,611,957
* 3,290,802
* 2023
* 828,793
* 2,819,623
* 3,648,416
* 2024
* 896.324
* 3.055.802
* 3.952.126
* 2025(Feb)
* 118.842
* 5.397
* 124.239

### Traffic statistics by country (2023)

Traffic by country at Chania International Airport – 2023 :
| Place | Country | Total pax |
| 1 | Greece | 828.793 |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 482.708 |
| 3 | Denmark | 315.619 |
| 4 | Germany | 312.716 |
| 5 | Norway | 277.276 |
| 6 | Poland | 257.793 |
| 7 | Sweden | 242.900 |
| 8 | Finland | 205.623 |
| 9 | Italy | 110.399 |
| 10 | France | 83.004 |
| 11 | Belgium | 71.690 |
| 12 | Austria | 68.582 |
| 13 | Romania | 65.210 |
| 14 | Cyprus | 61.049 |
| 15 | Hungary | 48.053 |
Source:

## Ground transport

The airport can be easily reached by car, bus or taxi via the main road network.