Thessaloniki Macedonia International Airport

Thessaloniki Macedonia International Airport is Greece's second-busiest airport after Athens (ATH) and the principal gateway for Macedonia, Thrace, northern Greece, and the popular Halkidiki peninsula resort market. Located 9 mi (14 km) southeast of central Thessaloniki at 22 ft (7 m) elevation on a narrow coastal strip between the Thermaic Gulf and the Halkidiki highway, SKG handles 168 routes across 95 destinations through 46 airlines — a network breadth that places it firmly above most non-capital European airports of comparable metropolitan population size. No Greek carrier bases a hub operation at SKG, but Aegean Airlines and Sky Express operate it as one of their largest non-Athens bases with extensive domestic and European service. Ryanair runs a substantial summer base here, and Wizz Air, easyJet, Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines, Austrian, Swiss, ITA Airways, Air France, KLM, British Airways, SAS, Finnair, LOT, and TAROM maintain daily or near-daily flights. The route mix reflects Thessaloniki's diverse catchment — dense German, Italian, UK, Scandinavian, and Benelux city-pair service for inbound tourism; Balkan regional links to Sofia, Bucharest, Tirana, Belgrade, and Skopje; and Middle East/Gulf service by Turkish Airlines, Pegasus, and seasonal Israeli carriers serving the Halkidiki and Mount Athos religious-tourism markets. Two asphalt runways — the primary 10/28 at 11,286 ft (3,440 m, extended in 2012 via a purpose-built 1.3 mi / 2.1 km causeway and earth embankment projecting into the Thermaic Gulf) and crosswind 16/34 at 7,907 ft (2,410 m) — support full widebody operations. The airport operates from a single expanded terminal following the 2021 opening of the Fraport-managed Terminal 1 extension, which tripled floor area and added 34 new check-in desks, 8 new boarding gates, and an automated baggage system. Passenger volume reached 8.7M in 2024, a record for the airport. The runway extension into the sea — visible on satellite imagery as a distinct rectangular peninsula — is among the most distinctive civil-engineering features of any Greek airport and was built to enable widebody operations on the main runway.