Heraklion Airport

If you fly to Crete in summer, you will very likely land here: at Heraklion “Nikos Kazantzakis” Airport, squeezed between the edge of the island’s capital and the Mediterranean. The field is cramped, old and chronically overloaded – and that is exactly what makes it exciting. On a single main runway, leisure flights from half of Europe, Greek domestic jets and turboprops alternate in dense succession on summer days. On top of that comes an expiration date: with the new airport at Kastelli, the old field will be history in a few years.

From farmland to Greece’s second-largest airport

The airport’s history begins in March 1939 on flat farmland east of the city. The first aircraft to touch down there is a Junkers Ju 52. Only two years later the field becomes a battlefield: in the German airborne operation on Crete in 1941, Heraklion airfield is one of the main targets, and the fighting goes down in history as the Battle of Heraklion.

After the war, civil aircraft land again from fall 1946, at first DC-3s. In 1947 the field gets a first small terminal building, in 1953 a paved runway in an east–west direction. From 1957 the then state airline Olympic Airways serves Heraklion and shapes domestic traffic for decades.

The real turning point comes with package tourism. Between 1968 and 1971 the runway is extended to about 2,680 meters and a new terminal is built. In March 1971 the first charter flight lands, and in May 1972 the expanded airport is officially inaugurated. From then on traffic grows almost without interruption – until the field hits its limits. In 2019 Heraklion counts just under eight million passengers, in 2025 about ten million. That makes Crete, after Athens Airport, Greece’s second-largest air traffic location.

One main runway between city and sea

The layout is quickly explained. The main runway 09/27 runs east–west, parallel to Crete’s north coast. North of it is practically the sea itself, south of it the terminals, the apron and the buildings of Nea Alikarnassos. To the west the city of Heraklion adjoins, to the east the coast toward Amnissos. There is also the short crosswind runway 12/30 at a good 1,500 meters, which plays practically no role for scheduled traffic.

This location makes the airport cramped. There is hardly any room for additional apron stands, and the terminal was last extended toward the apron and modernized inside in 2017/2018 – not a real capacity solution. That is exactly why the successor is being built at Kastelli.

Runway direction in use: 27 or 09?

As everywhere, aircraft take off and land into the wind. With westerly and northwesterly winds, operations run toward 27: aircraft then come in from the east over the coast and take off to the west toward the city. If the wind turns east, direction 09 applies and approaches come from the city side. Which direction is active at the moment decides at which end of the airport you see landings.

So before you set off, check the wind forecast and look in a flight tracker live to see which direction approaches are coming from. How to estimate this reliably is explained in the article Understanding the runway direction in use at an airport; for the weather side, the article on Windy and other weather maps helps.

Leisure flights from all over Europe

Heraklion lives off tourism, and you see it in the sky. Between spring and fall leisure, charter and low-cost airlines arrive from almost every country in Europe. From the German-speaking region, depending on season and schedule, carriers such as Condor, TUIfly, Eurowings, Discover Airlines and Edelweiss are part of the picture. Add British leisure airlines such as Jet2 and TUI Airways, low-cost carriers such as easyJet, Ryanair or Wizz Air as well as airlines from Scandinavia, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Benelux countries.

For you that means a colorful mix of liveries that you do not get at your home airport. In terms of types, though, the narrowbody world dominates: the Boeing 737-800 and its MAX successors, the A320 and the A321neo make up most of the leisure flights. If you want to tell the many similar jets apart, you will find help in the articles on the A320 family and the 737 generations. Many of the group aircraft belong to the TUI airline family, whose aircraft from several countries meet here.

How charter and scheduled traffic actually differ and why the line is blurring today is explained in the article Charter flight vs. scheduled flight.

Greek airlines: jets and turboprops

Greek carriers shape the traffic year-round. SKY express uses Heraklion as an important base and connects Crete with Athens, Thessaloniki and the islands. Aegean Airlines flies to Athens year-round and in summer additionally builds up Heraklion as a seasonal focus with international connections. Its regional subsidiary Olympic Air serves routes for which a jet would be too large.

So alongside Airbus jets such as the A320neo you regularly see turboprops – such as the ATR 72-600 or the Dash 8-400. These domestic and island flights keep running in winter too, when the leisure airliners have largely disappeared. Bluebird Airways is also a special case: the airline is based at the airport and focuses mainly on connections between Greece and Israel.

Spotting in Heraklion: what works and what doesn’t

To our knowledge there is no official spotter area or observation deck in Heraklion like at many central European airports. Whoever photographs here usually stands at publicly accessible places outside the grounds – on the coast, on roads near the runway ends or within sight of the approach path. The development around the airport is dense, and you will hardly find open meadows as in central Europe.

More important than the perfect vantage point in Greece is the right behavior. Heraklion is an airport shared by civil and military use, and Greek law takes the photographing of military installations very seriously. Spotters in Greece still remember the Kalamata case of 2001, in which a group of British and Dutch spotters were arrested after an air show. What applies today and how to behave is summarized in the article Plane spotting in Greece today.

Heat, light and gear

Crete in summer means: lots of sun, high temperatures and strong heat shimmer. Over long asphalt areas and the runway, warm air rises and quickly makes long-focal-length pictures soft. So plan your shooting times for the morning and evening hours and keep the distance to the subject as short as is legally possible. Tips are in the article Avoiding heat shimmer, and for yourself a look at Plane spotting in summer is worthwhile – water, a hat and sun protection are no luxury on the coast.

Because you are usually in Heraklion on vacation, your gear travels with you on the plane. A mid-range telephoto zoom is often enough for landings near the coast, and a longer lens helps for takeoffs at greater distance. How to transport camera and lenses safely in carry-on luggage is explained in the article Camera gear in carry-on luggage. And how to combine spotting and a family vacation is in Plane spotting on vacation.

The successor: Kastelli Airport

That the old airport can no longer keep growing has been a consensus in Greece for decades. The solution lies about 39 kilometers southeast of the city on the plateau near Kastelli. The Hellenic Air Force already operates a military airfield there, next to which the new civil airport is being built. The infrastructure ministry signed the concession agreement with a consortium of the Greek construction group GEK Terna and India’s GMR Group in February 2019, and the groundbreaking followed in February 2020.

The centerpiece of the new build is a new runway of about 3,200 meters on which large widebodies can also land. The terminal will be considerably larger than today’s; figures for the initial capacity vary by source around ten million passengers a year, with expansion reserves beyond that. Depending on the calculation, costs are well over one billion euros. A new access road connects the site to the island’s north coast highway.

Caution is advised with the schedule. Earlier schedules still named 2027 as the opening year. On a construction site visit in January 2026 the government cited a completion level of about 67 percent and confirmed the start of operations for 2028. Until the opening, operations in Heraklion continue as usual.

With the move, the old airport will be closed to scheduled traffic; under current plans the site of about 278 hectares goes to the city for urban redevelopment. For spotters that means: the pictures with sea and city backdrop that define Heraklion today will only exist for a few more summers.

Heraklion compared

Within Greece, Heraklion is the classic leisure airport par excellence – larger than Rhodes, Corfu or Kos, but with a similar seasonal rhythm. The year-round hub remains Athens Airport, complemented in the north by Thessaloniki Airport. If you are looking for spectacular low approaches, look to Corfu with the spot Kanoni or to Skiathos at the runway end.

In a Mediterranean comparison, Heraklion shares the profile of big leisure airports such as Palma de Mallorca or Antalya, but is considerably smaller and more cramped than these. An overview of all the Greek options is given in the Greece spotting guide.

Conclusion

Heraklion Airport is not a place for extended spotting days in comfort, but a cramped, overrun leisure airport with a lot of character. A main runway by the sea, a colorful airline mix from all over Europe and Greek turboprops make it varied in summer – provided you respect the strict rules around airfields shared with the military.

Add the factor of time: with the move to Kastelli, an airport disappears that has been the gateway to Crete since the beginnings of package tourism. If you still want it in your logbook, use the remaining summers.