Dana
100+ Posts
Very exciting stuff for Greek island fans (I'll just paste in a bit from an article I wrote a couple of weeks ago for the Sunday Times in the UK):
Beginning April 2014, Hellenic Seaplanes (www.hellenic-seaplanes.com) will start converting travel times between the Greek islands and ports from hours—even days, in some cases—to minutes. ‘Seaplanes will forever change the demography of tourism in Greece,’ predicts Hellenic’s Vice President Michael Assariotis. They brilliantly suit the country’s rugged coasts and islands, and in fact have been tried before in Greece, only to be doomed by bureaucratic quagmires. This time, however, the Greek government is on side. Kostis Moursouroulis, Minister of the Mercantile Marine and the Aegean states: ‘Greece with its Polynesian geography seems to be the natural place for seaplane operations and we support all the efforts underway.’
The company is kicking off in April with ten routes flown by 19-seater Canadian-made Twin Otter Series 400 aircraft, which have an excellent safety record and can land on sea or land. By the end of 2014, they aim to establish a hundred hydrodromes (floating piers) around the coasts of Greece.
(Among the first ten routes are to Lefkada, Skopelos, Patmos, Paxi, Zakynthos, and Ag. Nikolaos and Sitia in Crete)
Beginning April 2014, Hellenic Seaplanes (www.hellenic-seaplanes.com) will start converting travel times between the Greek islands and ports from hours—even days, in some cases—to minutes. ‘Seaplanes will forever change the demography of tourism in Greece,’ predicts Hellenic’s Vice President Michael Assariotis. They brilliantly suit the country’s rugged coasts and islands, and in fact have been tried before in Greece, only to be doomed by bureaucratic quagmires. This time, however, the Greek government is on side. Kostis Moursouroulis, Minister of the Mercantile Marine and the Aegean states: ‘Greece with its Polynesian geography seems to be the natural place for seaplane operations and we support all the efforts underway.’
The company is kicking off in April with ten routes flown by 19-seater Canadian-made Twin Otter Series 400 aircraft, which have an excellent safety record and can land on sea or land. By the end of 2014, they aim to establish a hundred hydrodromes (floating piers) around the coasts of Greece.
(Among the first ten routes are to Lefkada, Skopelos, Patmos, Paxi, Zakynthos, and Ag. Nikolaos and Sitia in Crete)
