Heraklion International Nikos Kazantzakis Airport

Heraklion International Airport 'Nikos Kazantzakis' is the second-busiest airport in Greece after Athens (ATH) and the primary air gateway to Crete — the largest Greek island and the fifth-largest in the Mediterranean — serving 62 airlines on 226 routes to 115 nonstop destinations. Located 5 km (3 mi) east of Heraklion city at an elevation of 115 ft (35 m) on the northern Cretan coast, HER is named for the novelist Nikos Kazantzakis ('Zorba the Greek', 'The Last Temptation of Christ'), whose grave sits on the Venetian city walls a short drive from the airport. HER's operational profile is among the most seasonally compressed of any large European airport: summer traffic from May through October is dominated by leisure charter and low-cost services from virtually every significant European origin, while winter traffic collapses to a small Athens shuttle and minimal year-round connections. The airport serves roughly 8 million passengers in a typical year, the overwhelming majority of them transiting in the 5-month high season, making HER one of the most acutely peak-loaded airports in the world by traffic concentration. Principal carriers include Aegean, Sky Express, Ryanair, easyJet, TUI Airways, Condor, Eurowings, Jet2, and Transavia. HER operates a single primary asphalt runway (09/27) at 8,904 ft (2,714 m) plus a disused secondary runway (12/30) at 5,138 ft (1,566 m) currently used for taxiing. The airport is deeply capacity-constrained: the terminal was built for a fraction of current traffic, and summer peak hours routinely exceed theoretical processing capacity. A replacement greenfield airport at Kastelli (Kasteli), 39 km (24 mi) southeast of Heraklion, has been under construction since 2019 and is scheduled to open in 2027 with a 10,498 ft (3,200 m) runway, a new 73,000-square-meter terminal, and eventual capacity for 10 million annual passengers. Upon opening, HER is scheduled to close to commercial traffic.