Greece’s Aegean Airlines has just announced a fascinating development, as the airline will be introducing a subfleet of Airbus A321neos, which will be longer range, and in a much less dense configuration.
In this post:
Aegean will fly four A321LRs in premium configuration
Star Alliance member Aegean exclusively flies Airbus A320-family aircraft, and the airline is currently modernizing its fleet with new A320neos and A321neos, all of which are in a regional configuration. That will be changing eventually, but only for a subfleet of aircraft.
Aegean has made the decision to invest in four Airbus A321neos with an extended range capability, and in a more comfortable configuration, to operate longer flights. Now, the airline talks about how these jets will be A321neos with “additional fuel tanks, providing operational capability for flights up to 7.5 hours.” It sounds to me like the airline is acquiring four A321LRs, though that’s not explicitly stated in that way (in fairness, the A321LR is a variant of the A321neo).
It won’t just be the range of these planes that’s special, but also the configuration. While Aegean’s standard A321neos are configured with 220 seats, these special jets will feature fewer than 180 seats. On top of that, they’ll have satellite connectivity, personal entertainment screens at every seat, and lie flat seats in business class. That’s a lot of firsts for the airline.
The company is expected to host a media event in the coming weeks with the details of these aircraft. These planes are expected to be delivered in 2026 and 2027.
Here’s how Aegean Airlines CEO Dimitris Gerogiannis describes these planes:
“We believe in the great opportunity for AEGEAN and for our country that lies in developing markets beyond the EU, either in the Gulf area, Africa or in regions of Asia which could be served with a special, extended range, version of the A321neo given our location in the southeast edge of Europe. We further recognize the necessity of a cabin with a significantly higher comfort and experience features to effectively represent AEGEAN’s service values, for our passengers in these markets. We are making a significant investment in the extended range and a totally new level of comfort for an initial four aircraft sub-fleet to give our crews the right tool to best represent AEGEAN values for these longer flight markets. It’s one more big step towards growing our reach and capabilities and we look forward to welcoming our passengers from these markets to this new level of experience with us in the years to come.”
Where will Aegean fly these special aircraft?
Aegean states that these new aircraft will primarily be used to operate flights in the range of 4-7.5 hours, to destinations to the south and southeast of Greece. These planes could be used for service to both existing and new non-EU destinations.
Aegean indicates that these planes will primarily fly to the Middle East and Africa:
- Of existing destinations, they could fly to Dubai (DXB), Jeddah (JED), and Riyadh (RUH)
- We could also see expansion to Bahrain (BAH), Doha (DOH), and Muscat (MCT)
- The airline sees potential in Africa, in Addis Ababa (ADD), Lagos (LOS), and Nairobi (NBO)
- The airline also sees potential in Asia, with flights to Delhi (DEL), Mumbai (BOM), and Almaty (ALA)
Admittedly all of those routes probably aren’t realistic with such a small subfleet, but it sounds like those are the destinations that Aegean will be picking from.
What a cool development for Aegean!
I’m a huge fan of Aegean Airlines. While there’s not much to get excited about with short haul configured aircraft within Europe, the airline has a phenomenal soft product. The airline still serves free food and drinks in economy, and the business class service is way better than what you’ll find on most European airlines.
The airline is also run in a very disciplined manner. Selfishly, I’ve long said that I wish Aegean would start long haul service, including to the United States, as I’d love to fly with the airline more. The thing is, that can’t be done in a consistently profitable basis year-round. So the airline is smart for avoiding those kinds of flights, even if there would be prestige to it.
Unfortunately Greece is so far from the United States that even the new Airbus A321XLR couldn’t make that journey, so Aegean would need wide body aircraft. I figure what Aegean is doing here is the next best thing — the airline is able to maintain fleet consistency in terms of using the Airbus A320-family of aircraft, while enhancing the experiencing on some routes.
Bottom line
Aegean will be taking delivery of four longer range Airbus A321neos (presumably A321LRs), which the airline will use for 4-7.5 hour flights to non-EU destinations. While the carrier’s standard A321neos have 220 seats, these new planes will have fewer than 180 seats, with flat beds in business class, seat back entertainment, and more. What a fun development!
What do you make of Aegean’s evolution?
Aegean lacks customer service, be very careful with them. They brought our bag from Barcelona to Athens late and then never sent it onwards to the islands as they said they would. Their customer service is just a reservations dept and said our only option was to email and the response time was 15 business days. We interrupted our trip to fly back to Athens to pick the bag up ourselves and they didn’t reimburse...
Aegean lacks customer service, be very careful with them. They brought our bag from Barcelona to Athens late and then never sent it onwards to the islands as they said they would. Their customer service is just a reservations dept and said our only option was to email and the response time was 15 business days. We interrupted our trip to fly back to Athens to pick the bag up ourselves and they didn’t reimburse us in full for costs incurred only 40 euros per day which gets you next to nothing in Greece! Proceed with caution if you anticipate any issues with your travel with them.
One of the few respectable airlines in Europe.
Any indication of whether or not Aegean is looking at 5th freedom flight options, to go further afield from the new destinations?
I've been wishing that Aegean would invest in A350s or similar for direct flights to North America, the US in particular. That would be a dream.
Finally an exiting use of those 4 business upgrade vouchers.
This is a natural progression for A3 with little risk. Try out how their product will yield on slightly longer range flights and work a new product in. Progress to the XLR for potential routes like BKK and further into Africa, then maybe try long haul.
This is massive. I'd wager that NBO, LOS, ALA and BOM are most likely of the destinations listed. Maybe MCT now that Oman Air is downsizing and abandoned plans to return to ATH. Aegean also started flights to DXB alongside Emirates with their codeshare agreement as a lower-cost alternative to EK. I could see the A321LRs also heading to premium longer European destinations in the Winter with a premium. But South and Southeast is definitely...
This is massive. I'd wager that NBO, LOS, ALA and BOM are most likely of the destinations listed. Maybe MCT now that Oman Air is downsizing and abandoned plans to return to ATH. Aegean also started flights to DXB alongside Emirates with their codeshare agreement as a lower-cost alternative to EK. I could see the A321LRs also heading to premium longer European destinations in the Winter with a premium. But South and Southeast is definitely untapped potential since the US-Greece market is so dominated already by US Airlines. I hope that if this is successful Aegean can consider upscaling to widebodies (maybe A330neos) for longer journeys to JNB, BKK or HND (although TG and NH would probably start flying to ATH before then). But again, ATH suffers from being geographically close to IST and Turkish airlines. I see ATH's long haul expansion in the next few years with Air India and Thai almost certainly returning.
Would be an interesting addition to the fleet, but...
Something something about how close Athens is to Istanbul and how much route overlap there would be between Aegean and Turkish. Seems a bit like "David vs Goliath" here unless I'm missing something...
For better or worse, there is a not insignificant subset of Greeks, both in Greece and in the diaspora, who will never fly TK.
If A3 offers a similar product at a similar price i'd prefer ATH to connect. While TK has a solid product, IST is just too massive. In ATH i don't have to walk a mile to connect after taxiing for 20 minutes
One-stop service would be from/to Europe (mostly east of France), northern Africa, and the easternmost parts of the Mediterranean. Those areas are already reasonably well-served by the Star Alliance to many destinations. So, look for destinations which are less well-served by *A from Europe. ;-)
Middle East destinations are either well-served by airlines in general or (as with JED) have higher seasonality. I don't think they'll be on those routes, but that's more a gut...
One-stop service would be from/to Europe (mostly east of France), northern Africa, and the easternmost parts of the Mediterranean. Those areas are already reasonably well-served by the Star Alliance to many destinations. So, look for destinations which are less well-served by *A from Europe. ;-)
Middle East destinations are either well-served by airlines in general or (as with JED) have higher seasonality. I don't think they'll be on those routes, but that's more a gut feeling.
In Asia, DEL and BOM are well-served and home to *A member Air India, though their ongoing revitalization might prompt trying to capture market share before it's too late and/or for codesharing leverage later. ALA would almost certainly be profitable though I'm not sure it has the volume to be more than *marginally* profitable.
In Africa, ADD is home to *A member Ethiopian, who already serve ATH non-stop. However, service to ADD on Aegean would let people get there from many origins without changing airlines. NBO and LOS are stronger options, neither are home to *A members and have year-round demand.
My personal bets are LOS or NBO as most likely; ADD, ALA, or BOM as next most likely with DEL close behind; and the Middle East as less likely (though certainly feasible).
Was about to type something along the lines of what Tom said, but rather than CDG, I see MUC/FRA more plausible, given the *A relationship and potentially allowing NA passengers to connect in one of those hubs and continue onwards to ATH/HER/(and more unlikely) SKG on an actual business class product.
Besides, being MUC based, I really hope we could see an actual J seat for intra-EU
I doubt that will be the case. This is more for flights that require the range
While I suppose the Middle East is where these planes will travel to most, I wouldn't be surprised if A3 used these planes during on certain rotations
I can see these also popping up on LHR and CDG (the longest and most premium Western Europe flights) - this might be higher margin than flying to India or whatever. Turkish does this with lie flats to LHR for example and is able to consistently charge >$1K return for these rotations in J (the price for Turkish is always higher than BA on the same route and the Turkish lieflat flights are normally more expensive still).
You’ll be surprised - India’s % of high yield traffic is low but Greece is extremely popular and those wouldn’t be a lot of seats to fill. Add to that the competition to those destinations. I think Turkish has a much higher standard product (also deploying A330s/77ws so at least the hard product is leagues ahead) vs competition than Aegean would be able to command.
Yes, I would be surprised - Greece can't be that popular as India sends like 10% of the tourists that come from the UK or Germany to Greece each year and I'm also not aware of any particular business connection between India and Greece. Beyond the massive difference in GDP per capita, it would be made even harder to fill expensive lie flat seats by the fact India is so large and so you'd be...
Yes, I would be surprised - Greece can't be that popular as India sends like 10% of the tourists that come from the UK or Germany to Greece each year and I'm also not aware of any particular business connection between India and Greece. Beyond the massive difference in GDP per capita, it would be made even harder to fill expensive lie flat seats by the fact India is so large and so you'd be requiring a lot of the passengers to choose to connect domestically in India to get access to the lie flats on the BOM-ATH sector or whatever - I imagine a lot would just continue to take EK.
Not sure what the GDP gap has to do with travel demand. BOM and DEL, both 20M population cities operate 7x flights/day to US, 4x/day to Australia as two examples pretty sustainably fill flat bed seats on these planes. A321s are much smaller in comparison. These cities are 22M+ people so it's pretty basic math to see what kind of demand even a 0.001% of those represent. On top of that, EK would in fact...
Not sure what the GDP gap has to do with travel demand. BOM and DEL, both 20M population cities operate 7x flights/day to US, 4x/day to Australia as two examples pretty sustainably fill flat bed seats on these planes. A321s are much smaller in comparison. These cities are 22M+ people so it's pretty basic math to see what kind of demand even a 0.001% of those represent. On top of that, EK would in fact have a logistical disadvantage because a BOM-ATH would be ~6 hour flight which would nearly double with a 2 hour layover at DXB. This is without even getting into the stupid business class product that EK has on their 777s.
"I'm also not aware of any particular business connection between India and Greece"
Aegean and Air India both being Star Alliance?
@Tom
I feel ya.
Waste of time to reason with armchair network planners.
They don't even understand significance of GDP per capita or business connections.
Right, GDP gap has nothing to do with demand. Since India's GDP is wayyy larger than Greece. But somehow average annual income in India is around $6k, just enough to buy 2 RT in business class to EU and literally eat dirt for the rest of the year.
...@Tom
I feel ya.
Waste of time to reason with armchair network planners.
They don't even understand significance of GDP per capita or business connections.
Right, GDP gap has nothing to do with demand. Since India's GDP is wayyy larger than Greece. But somehow average annual income in India is around $6k, just enough to buy 2 RT in business class to EU and literally eat dirt for the rest of the year.
Right, US-China business connection is Delta and China Eastern are both SkyTeam.
I feel ya.
Admittedly, I only fly them to collect my 4 segments to renew my A3 Gold status, but I agree, the soft product is decent.
The non-Schengen lounge in ATH is nice and spacious, while the Schengen lounge is under-dimensioned.
I could see potential for a expansion in Africa or the ME with a decent l/h product based on the A321LR.
For all of the handwringing at the time about letting Olympic go bankrupt, can anybody claim in hindsight that it hasn't worked out great for Greek travelers? So much more choice from so many better airlines that have replaced it. Good riddance.
Agree. My wife and I were blown away on business flight from Santorini-Athens. Great service, great food and friendly professional staff. Not necessarily what we were expecting. Athens to Kenya--you've got my ear.
Food? They don't even serve drinks on that flight, seeing as it's barely 20 minutes long. Sure you didn't just bring something onboard from the airport?
They do serve drinks on that flight!
Flew ATH-JTR last fall. Business got a pre-departure drink, but I definitely don't remember there being any food options.