Corfu Airport

My wife and I have experienced Corfu airport on more than one occasion and although it seems small for the amount of passengers it handles I can honestly say that no real problems have as yet been encountered. We were once delayed upon departure for four hours (nothing to do with security checks and queues elsewhere) while a problem with our outbound flight was resolved. The aircraft was a B767-300 for anyone interested. Because of this they allowed us outside where a huge amount of chairs had been arranged under canvas to keep the hot sun off (30 degrees). This reduced congestion inside the building. We went back in with an hour to go and eventually departed Corfu. Great flight good crew and no complaints worthy of note. Problems happen with aircraft and I'm always happy to wait for the right people to fix them!

Having been a frequent visitor to the island over the past ten years I can confirm that the airport has gone from unorganised chaos to organised chaos! It is fair to say that the staff and management at the airport have done a lot to get their act together but still seem to do things the greek way and to greek time. The new system of checking into receive boarding passes and then taking your cases to the end of the check in desk for scanning does seem to be speeding up the queues but i still have to ask why they have to make this a separate procedure? On my visit in July the new check in system worked so well that the queue for passport control was now snaking twice round all the way back out of the terminal and back in and up to the one security guard checking passports. Two Guards would have made this easier and faster but then how would the hand baggage scanners keep up? The Airport have to build in delays somewhere along the chain and make passengers queue somewhere along the line otherwise they just would not cope with the demand and the whole process would just collapse! The Airport does not help matters when it herds all non domestic passengers through one end of the terminal leaving the other end of the terminal that is used for internal flights empty. They could also scan luggage once it has been checked in. As for the tour operators? I know most seem to work to a Monday/Friday system but i think some also go on Tuesdays. We have to share the airport with other tour operators from other countries like Germany and the airport has allocated other days of the week to them otherwise it would never cope. I think the thing that frustrates us all is why three or four planes from the UK arrive within the hour and snarl up the arrivals system? The baggage reclaim hall is tiny with only two carousels. Everyone is also too impatient when arriving into the hall to reclaim their baggage! When you arrive in the hall just relax and take your time! Use the toilet find a trolley or make contact with your holiday rep in arrivals or collect your hire car. Corfu is not like our airports and you can wander freely into the arrivals hall at any time to sort out what you need to. It always amuses to see a plane load of passengers jostling for position at the carousel and then waiting half an hour for the belt to spring into life. The Greeks do not rush and they certainly don't worry about a hall full of impatient passengers!

The previous comments are all spot on - but on rare days it can work like a dream. Returned from Aghios Gordios Friday Aug 10th at 11 pm for a 01:00am flight to East Midlands. Disembarked the minibus at 23:45 check in desk open luggage straight into scanners and through passport control by midnight and on the plane around 00:30 ready for take-off. Meanwhile passengers for other destinations were queuing as described though I spotted that new sheltered seating had been provided outside since I was last there. I dread to think what it could have been like had the visitor numbers not been so visibly down since my last visit. The local taverna owners all commented on it. I've come to expect to be patient waiting for luggage on the way into Corfu but much worse are the queues for departures when you're tired and a bit fed up at the thought of going home at all! The worst part of the trip was the flight home on the most uncomfortable plane I've ever been in. Corfu Airport is a lovely little airport and I have to agree it surely would work so much better if the holiday companies managed their collection of travellers from resorts with more regard for the airport's handling facilities and staggered their arrivals and departures better through the week.

As an independent traveller I am amazed that company reps seem to have so much control or imply they have control over who waits in and outside the terminal building for flights. The tour companies must take responsibility for their own customers and not interfere with independent travellers. Half of the congestion is caused by the tour operators collecting customers for a number of flights on the same coach meaning many are arriving at the airport well in advance of their required check in time! I travel to Corfu at least twice a year and have done so for the past 10 yrs. The tour operators are causing most of the problems by bringing flights in on basically two transfer days. It has got worse not better over time. What they need to remember is that passengers are their clients and it is they who should be calling the tune not the other way round and certainly passengers should not be herded around like sheep when they pay such prices for their holidays!! The airport and its staff are wonderful. It is clean and tidy everyone is friendly. Scanners were better this May than they have been in the past. Tour companies are the problem!

Tom Phillips has got it just about right! We have just returned from Corfu from our 6th holiday there in seven years. Olympic Airways are simply choking the airport to death they will not allow enough flights to satisfy the demand from holiday makers and villa/studio owners. We hear the same old story all over the island too few flights and mostly on Fridays and Mondays from the UK. If it were not for the reps from the tour operators happily helping customers out inside the terminal half the flights would never get off the ground. The reps are great they help all travellers irrespective of who they are booked with. They seem to know that if they don't do there best to make it all work their jobs will inevitably be on the line before long. Shame that Olympic seem to be completely oblivious to this. Visitor numbers are visibly down this year and this is confirmed by restaurant owners car hire companies and those offering accomodation. I guess that that many who experienced the new systems at the airport last summer may not all have returned this year.

After a number of years when the authorities did not care about its passengers the Corfu authorities seem to have got the formula right at last! It is still too small for the amount of people using the airport but it now does seem to run like a well oiled machine. The flights tend to be on time and the turn round of the aircraft seems efficient. Land and away in a little over an hour. However the departure lounge tends to be as overcrowed as it was when I first went to Corfu in 1985.

Passed through last week with family (eight pax including two small children). Sadly not only does Corfu never get better it’s now got even worse. The main problem is that nearly all charter flights arrive and depart at the same time on the same day so unless you’re arriving on a scheduled flight from Athens at some other time the place is always swamped. The arrivals hall is as cramped and smoky as ever with far too few luggage carousels; but it’s at departures that things have taken a nosedive. It used to be commonplace at check-in to see long queues snaking back outside the terminal onto the footpath. Be warned: this situation is now the norm. New (new to me: someone said they’d been in place for a year or more) ‘improved’ security procedures mean your hold luggage now has to be screened before check-in. As there are just four X-ray machines trying to screen up to a thousand passengers at the same time the overcrowding can be imagined. So the airport has hit on a novel solution: keep passengers outside until there’s space at the machines. Result: you are now asked to check in three hours before departure the first hour of which will be spent waiting outside in the sun until the check-in opens at which point the queue will be allowed to inch slowly into the terminal. On the day we left there were two queues on our side of the entrance two on the other with passengers waiting side-by-side. We got inside after about an hour and a quarter; spent another twenty minutes queuing for the X-ray; ten minutes checking in; ten more minutes at immigration then hurried into the equally cramped smoky departure lounge just as our flight was being called. Being in such a large group worked in our favour as half of us were able to sit inside with the kids while the others queued. We were also queuing next to the terminal wall outside which meant at least some shade. God help you if you’re stuck by the curb in the full glare of the sun. Bring sun block water and a hat. The irony is that Corfu could be quite a nice little airport: it’s clean and well-kept; there are pleasant places to eat and drink landside and even the snack bar in departures has a reasonable selection of food and drink. But it’s simply too small and ill-equipped to deal with such large numbers of passengers and these new procedures have made things much worse. Could they not spare a fraction of the enormous income generated by tourism each year to extend the building and/or buy another half-dozen X-ray machines? Sadly those of us who have been travelling to this island for years know the answer to that.