Departure
94%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Skiathos Island National Airport (LGSK), known locally as Alexandros Papadiamantis Airport, sits on the northern Aegean island of Skiathos in Thessaly, Greece. It is best known among aviation enthusiasts for its short, narrow runway that runs close to a public road, making final approaches and departures highly visible to spectators. For a simulator pilot it offers a compact, visually dramatic single-runway operation surrounded by sea and hills.
Skiathos Island National Airport is a single-runway aerodrome on the Greek island of Skiathos, built on land reclaimed between the main island and the smaller island of Lazareta, a former leper colony. It is operated under a long-term concession by the Fraport AG/Copelouzos Group joint venture, which manages fourteen regional Greek airports. The field is named after the Greek novelist Alexandros Papadiamantis, a native of the island, and is a popular destination for planespotters because of the proximity of its runway threshold to an adjacent public road, drawing comparisons with Princess Juliana International Airport in Sint Maarten.
The airport lies on the island of Skiathos in the Thessaly region of Greece, occupying land created by joining Skiathos to the smaller adjacent island of Lazareta. No specific airspace classification or neighbouring controlled airspace detail is given in available sources, but pilots should expect the aerodrome to sit within Greek FIR structure typical of the Aegean island airports.
Skiathos has a single physical hard-surfaced runway aligned 01/19, lit for night operations. Runway 01 is recorded at 5,152 ft and runway 19 at 5,343 ft, giving the strip a length of a little over 5,300 ft. The field elevation is 30 ft. There is no ILS available at the airport.
The airport is served by an air-ground station, Skiathos Radio, on 563.7 MHz. Approach and tower services operate under the callsigns Skiathos Approach and Skiathos Tower, both on 126.05 MHz. No instrument landing system is fitted to the runway.
The runway's proximity to a public road at its threshold is a well-known visual feature and a favoured vantage point for observing arrivals and departures at close range. The airport occupies reclaimed land joining Skiathos to the smaller island of Lazareta, giving the field a distinctive narrow, sea-bounded profile that is a useful landmark when approaching from over water. A set of traffic lights at the southern end of the runway, installed to prevent jet-blast incidents on the adjacent road, is another notable local feature.
Skiathos Airport first became operational in 1972. A passenger terminal and new control tower were built in 1988, followed by a new terminal in 2002 after the 2001 building was closed due to a minor earthquake. The runway was extended by 110 metres on its northern side in 2014, and in 2016 the ramp was enlarged with six additional airliner parking stands and a new taxiway, with the former two stands retained for smaller aircraft. In December 2015 the privatisation of Skiathos Island National Airport, along with thirteen other Greek regional airports, was finalised through an agreement between the Fraport AG/Copelouzos Group joint venture and the Greek state privatisation fund, with the concession running for forty years from 11 April 2017.
Skiathos today handles scheduled and seasonal charter services from a range of European airlines, with domestic connections mainly to Athens. Since 2019, as part of Fraport's redevelopment works, the airport has operated two terminals, one handling domestic traffic and the other international arrivals. The runway's short, narrow characteristics limit operations to aircraft up to the size of a Boeing 757-200, and the field remains a working commercial airport rather than a general aviation base.