Paros airport: flights from Athens only, and it closes at dusk

Fly or ferry from Athens?

Most guides answer this with a list of pros and cons, as if it came down to taste. It mostly comes down to three facts. The flight leaves from Athens airport, while the ferry leaves from Piraeus, more than an hour away across the city. The airport on Paros shuts around sunset. And the plane is an ATR with an 8 kg cabin limit, while the boat will take whatever you can carry up the ramp. Set your own case below and it strikes out what does not work.

If you are connecting off an international flight into Athens and it lands before mid-afternoon, fly. Going from a hotel in the city, take the ferry, because Piraeus is forty minutes away on the metro and the airport is further. We compare the boats themselves, Blue Star against the high-speed ones, in our guide to the Athens to Paros ferry, including why the fast boat rarely pays on this particular route.

The wind is the fourth thing, and it points the other way from what people expect. In July and August the meltemi blows hard from the north, and the high-speed boats are the first thing kept in port, sometimes for a day or two. That is when a seat on the plane earns its price even for someone who planned on the ferry.

What flies to PAS, and how often

Two airlines, one real route. Olympic Air, the regional arm of Aegean, runs up to eight flights a day from Athens in season, and Sky Express adds two to four more. In summer there is also a Thessaloniki service, a handful of flights a week. Nothing arrives from outside Greece. The Czech and Austrian charters still listed on some pages flew for a few summers after the new runway opened and have not come back.

The planes are ATR 42s and 72s, twin turboprops with around fifty to seventy seats. That has two consequences. The flight is short and low, about 45 minutes gate to gate and a fine view of the Cyclades on a clear day. And there are not many seats, so in July and August the cheap ones are gone weeks ahead. Sky Express published fares from about €24 one way in September 2026, Olympic from about €53, and both climb steeply as the plane fills. By late October the timetable drops to four or five flights a day, and it stays thin through the winter.

Because Olympic is part of Aegean, a Paros flight can go on the same ticket as an Aegean flight into Athens, with the bag checked through. If your connection runs late, the airline rebooks you. With a separate cheap ticket, you are on your own. Our page on Athens airport covers the connection itself and the ways out to Piraeus if you end up on the boat after all.

It shuts at dusk

This is the fact almost no guide to this airport mentions, and the one that decides most trips. Paros airport has no night operations. The hours set by the Greek slot authority follow sunset almost to the minute, so the last flight of the day gets earlier each week from August on. If you reach Athens in the evening, Paros is a boat the next morning or a flight the next day, whatever you are willing to pay.

The bottom row is the other thing to read. The last bus off the airport leaves at 18:20, while the runway stays open until 19:15. Anyone on the last flight of the day in September lands after the last bus, and has a taxi or a booked transfer to choose from.

The luggage catch on a turboprop

People fly into Athens with a large case and a cabin bag, then book the cheapest Paros fare and find it covers neither. On Sky Express the cabin bag is 55 × 40 × 23 cm and 8 kg, with a small personal item on top, and the two cheapest fares include no checked bag at all. The next one up includes 15 kg and the top one 23 kg. Olympic works the same way on the same cabin size, except that its lightest fare lets you take the cabin bag or the personal item, not both.

The overhead bins on an ATR are small, so a full-size cabin bag often goes in the hold at the aircraft door anyway, free of charge. That is not a way round the weight limit. If you are travelling with a suitcase, price the fare that includes it before comparing with the ferry, where nobody weighs anything.

The airport bus, and why you probably will not take it

One of the pages Google ranks for this airport says a bus leaves fifteen minutes after every landing. The operator's timetable says otherwise. KTEL Paros runs five buses a day from the terminal to Parikia, at fixed times, with no link to the flights. The buses the other way are Aliki buses that call at the airport on the way.

The bus only goes to Parikia. For Naoussa, the east coast or Lefkes you change at the bus station by the ferry quay, which in practice means waiting for a second timetable with your luggage. It works if you land at 10:30 and are in no hurry. Otherwise the taxi rank is the realistic way off the airport.

Taxis, and when to book a transfer

The rank is right outside the door, and on a quiet day the arithmetic is simple: roughly €20 to €30 to Parikia and €35 to €45 to Naoussa, on the meter, with supplements for bags and at night. The trouble is the fleet. Paros has only a few taxis for an island that fills up in summer, and when two ATRs land close together in August, about 140 people come out of a small building at once. The ones at the back of the queue wait for the cars to come back from Naoussa.

Where the runway is, and what is near it

The airport is not near the town people picture when they think of Paros. It sits on the flat ground of the south-west, between the salt marsh at Aliki and the ferry ramp for Antiparos. Parikia is fifteen minutes up the coast road, and Naoussa is more than twice that, because the road to the north coast runs through the port first.

Position

Our map of Paros shows the rest of the island, the ring road and the times from Parikia. If you are still choosing where to stay, the transfer is part of it: which part of Paros to stay in covers the trade between the cheaper port and Naoussa, which is dearer and further from both the runway and the ferry.

The terminal that opened in 2016: one building, one forecourt, and the taxi rank right outside. Photo by Felix Riehle, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Whether to take a car from the terminal

Paros is a good island for a car, better than most of its neighbours. One surfaced road goes all the way round it, and the buses are built around Parikia, which leaves the east coast, the hill villages and the quieter beaches a change or two away. Several hire companies have desks at the airport, and picking the car up there saves the taxi into town.

Two points before booking. The desks work to the flight schedule, so on the last flight of the day, check that your pickup time is covered. And if Antiparos is on the plan, ask whether the car is allowed on the Pounta ferry, since most Greek rental agreements restrict sea crossings unless you have written permission.

The new airport, and the runway that is not longer yet

Paros got its first airstrip in 1982, a 710 metre runway a little further south, too short for anything but small planes. The present airport replaced it on 25 July 2016, with a 1,400 metre runway and a terminal paid for in part by Olympic Air. That is long enough for the ATRs and not for the jets that carry Europeans to Mykonos and Santorini.

The plan to change that has been running since 2020 and has not got far. A contract worth about €33 million to lengthen the runway to roughly 1,800 metres and build a new terminal was signed in 2023, with a 2025 deadline. The works stalled after the contractor was taken over, the deadline was pushed to September 2028, and in August 2026 the project went into the national development programme with €45 million and an official end date of 2030. Nobody should plan on an international flight to Paros before the end of the decade.

A note on the name, since it causes confusion in flight searches. PAS is the IATA code, LGPA the ICAO code, and the slot authority lists it as Panteleou Paros Airport, after the family who gave the land for the 1982 strip. The codes for the other Greek airports, and which islands have none, are on our guide to Greek airports.