Aegean from Athens: the Greek carrier, the summer that never ends, the island routes and the crew who stay for the light

Athens, Aegean, and Greek crew appear on this forum mostly in the Emirates and Qatar threads, which tells you something about the pay, and never in a thread about Aegean itself, which tells you something else. Here is the airline.

The airline

The Greek flag carrier, Star Alliance, based in Athens with a big Thessaloniki operation and seasonal bases on the islands. An A320 family fleet including the neos. A network that is Europe, the Middle East, some North Africa, and the Greek islands, which are a network of their own.

The summer

April to October is the whole year. The island flying (Santorini, Mykonos, Rhodes, Crete, Corfu, and thirty others) is constant, the European leisure flying is constant, and the roster in July is six days on, one off, four sectors a day, full cabins of people arriving at the best week of their year and leaving sunburnt. The Athens summer heat on the apron is a physical fact. Nobody takes leave in summer. Nobody is allowed to.

The winter

Quiet. The island flying drops to the lifeline routes, the European flying drops to the business routes, and the roster in January has more days off than duty days. Some crew love it (the ski season, the time at home). Some crew find it too quiet and go on unpaid leave to do a Gulf winter or a season elsewhere. The seasonality is the airline.

The pay

A Greek salary. Basic plus flight pay plus allowances, in euros, and the honest number is modest: livable in Athens if you share or live with family, which most Greek crew do, and not enough for the Greek crew who want to save, which is why the Gulf threads are full of us. Summer months are decent because of the sector count. Winter months are not.

The island routes

The best flying in Europe, by my measure. A 40 minute sector from Athens to Santorini with the caldera on the descent, four times a day, in a cabin that is half tourists gasping and half islanders going home. Short, beautiful, intense. The crew who have done a summer of islands have seen Greece from the air in a way that nobody else has.

The crew who stay for the light

There are crew at Aegean with twenty years who could have gone to the Gulf and did not, and when you ask them why they say the light, or the islands, or Athens in October, or their mother. They are not wrong. The pay is what it is. The life is Greek.

For applicants

Greek language required, effectively, though the page says otherwise. Hiring in spring for the summer. A good first airline for a Greek candidate and a good second one for a Greek crew member coming home from the Gulf, which is a real path.