Departure
95%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Sitia Public Airport, known locally by its full name Municipal Airport of Sitia "Vitsentzos Kornaros", is a small community aerodrome on the eastern side of Crete, sited on high ground just north-northwest of Sitia town. It offers a single hard-surfaced runway without instrument approach aids, making it a straightforward VFR destination for pilots exploring the quieter eastern end of the island. The field has served scheduled domestic traffic since 1984 and remains modest in scale, with facilities upgraded over the decades even as its essential character as a regional Cretan airport has stayed the same.
Sitia Airport (ICAO: LGST, IATA: JSH) is a small, municipally-owned airport on the eastern part of Crete, operated by the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority on behalf of the Municipality of Sitia. It serves the nearby town of Sitia with domestic air links and is of interest to the visiting VFR pilot chiefly for its position on the less-developed eastern end of the island, away from the busier international gateways of Heraklion and Chania. The airport has a single runway, no instrument landing system, and a straightforward operating environment typical of a regional Greek island field.
The airport lies in the region of Mponta (also referred to as Bonda), within the Municipality of Sitia in the Lasithi regional unit, on the eastern part of Crete. It sits about 1 km north-northwest of Sitia town centre, close to the island's north coast, which is followed by the main road linking the airport to Aghios Nikolaos and the rest of eastern Crete.
Sitia has a single physical runway, 05/23, 6,817 ft (approximately 2,074 m) long with a hard asphalt surface and runway lighting. There is no ILS. Historically the field also had a shorter runway aligned 17/35, some 2,460 ft in length, which has since been closed and is no longer in use; the current 05/23 runway was itself rebuilt and extended in the early 2000s, reopening in January 2003.
The airport is served by an A/G radio frequency of 563.7 MHz, with an AFIS (Aerodrome Flight Information Service) frequency of 122.6 MHz. There is no ILS or other precision approach aid, so arrivals and departures are conducted under visual conditions with reference to the AFIS unit.
The airport occupies raised ground on the Bonda/Mponta hill about 1 km north-northwest of Sitia town centre, making the town itself, the adjacent coastline, and the high ground on which the runway sits useful references when approaching from seaward or along the coast road that runs east-west past the field.
Sitia Airport began operations on 7 June 1984, when an Olympic Airways Dornier Do-228 (registration SX-BHF) made a test landing to check the facility and its handling arrangements. The airport was officially opened two days later, on 9 June 1984, under the name Δημοτικός Αερολιμένας Σητείας (Municipal Airport of Sitia), and the first scheduled service, flight OAL 7001, arrived at 10:30 that same day. Flights from Rhodes followed on 13 June and from Karpathos the day after. On 20 May 1993 airport operations moved into a newly built terminal and control tower covering 550 square metres. A new runway aligned 05/23, 2,074 metres long, was completed and brought into use in early 2003, along with three new taxiways and two new aircraft stands, at which point the old terminal was replaced by a temporary building of 1,000 square metres. The airport was later renamed to honour the Cretan poet Vitsentzos Kornaros. Passenger services moved into a substantially larger terminal, covering 7,500 square metres, with the move completed by January 2016.
Sitia continues to handle scheduled domestic services, with Olympic Air operating flights to Athens, Karpathos, Kasos and Rhodes, and Sky Express serving Alexandroupoli and Preveza/Lefkada. The airport is operated by the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority for the Municipality of Sitia and remains a modest regional facility geared toward domestic and charter traffic rather than international operations.