Symi Travel News

Ryanair have just announced that they will cancel their flights to Rhodes and Kos from the 2nd October 2012  as the “marketing support” (aka subsidy) they were due to get for the month of October will not be available. I will update the “Getting There” charts as quickly as possible, in the meantime anyone who is booked on a Ryanair flight to or from Rhodes/Kos in October should start looking for alternatives immediately. Ryanair will of course have to issue refunds.

The delay in opening Berlin Brandenburg International Airport has now got to the stage that March 2013 has been announced as the new date. There may however be further problems with this as Tegel Airport is only authorised to continue in use until the end of 2012. This suggests that the smoke extraction system will have to be substantially redesigned before the terminal building will get a safety certificate. As a result all flights to Rhodes this summer will need to use either Tegel or Schoenfeld airports and I have updated the pdf file showing flights from Germany to reflect this.

Non Stop and one stop flights to Rhodes from Italy, summer 2012
NonStop flights to Rhodes from the UK 2012 – version 8
Non-Stop and One Stop to Rhodes from Cyprus – 2012
Connecting flights from Athens and Thessaloniki to Rhodes. summer 2012
NonStop or Direct to Rhodes from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden – 2012 version 1
Non Stop to Rhodes from Belgium and Luxembourg 2012 version 1
NonStop or Direct to Rhodes from the Netherlands 2012 – version 1
NonStop to Rhodes from Germany 2012 – Version 3
NonStop to Rhodes from Switzerland 2012, version 1
NonStop or Direct to Rhodes from Austria 2012, version 1

In other news, Strategic Airlines got off to a spectacular start with their Olympic Holidays charter flights from the UK to Rhodes yesterday – the Manchester flight was 12 hours late leaving, and the Gatwick one 18 hours. Any Symi passengers should have got to the island this morning if they were travelling from Manchester, Gatwick passengers if they weren’t moved to another flight won’t reach Symi till Friday – rotten luck if they were on a one week holiday. Hope they improve the reliability of the fleet, but they did sub-charter another plane from Spain to operate the Gatwick flight.

Dodekanisos Seaways have now released further sailings for the period up to 16 September, and these are available for booking.
These fill the gaps in the Dodecanese Pride and Dodecanese Express schedules and in particular provide the much-needed early morning departures from Symi to Rhodes on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays (07:45 from Symi) and evening sailings from Rhodes To Symi on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays (18:15 from Rhodes).
The timetable for the Panagia Skiadeni from 1 June onwards is still to be issued.

Taken in conjunction with the sailings by Proteus and various Blue Star line ships (same times, they just keep swapping round which ship they use) this gives between 2 and 4 sailings each way a day for the summer, with the prospect of more to come with Skiadeni.

I would strongly recommend advance booking for sailings by Dodecanese Pride and Dodecanese Express – you can book on line and collect the tickets at the ticket office where the boats berth. Last year some would be passengers were turned away at Rhodes because the boats were full on some dates.

Thanks to Mark for the advance warning of the extra sailings.

I have been concentraing on ferries for quite a time now, and there will be more to come, but here’s some flight news.

Firstly, the new Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport which was due to open on 6 June will be delayed significantly. This is because the tests of evacuating the terminal in fire and smoke conditions cannot be carried out. Rumour is that the system which is supposed to extract smoke from the building to give enough time to carry out a proper evacuation simply doesn’t work, so the tests would inevitably fail. The earliest possible opening date is now August, but industry insiders are suggesting that October is a more likely date, and even that is being optimistic. This means that flights will have to continue using Tegel and Schoenfeld airports. There are many problems with this – although Schoenfeld and Berlin-Brandenburg are on the same site, Tegel is miles away, and airlines have produced schedules allowing for additional flights and for connections, neither of which can be handled at Tegel. In addition some of the staff at Tegel will lose their jobs and are working their notice period. Once I have more details of what will happen, I’ll update the “getting there from Germany” table, in the meantime the old one is linked to below.

In the UK the dismantling of BMI-British Midland is speeding up. It has been sold by its previous owners, Lufthansa, to IAG, the parent of British Airways, and IAG will integrate the Heathrow-based operations into BA over the summer. Planes are starting to be repainted in BA colours and flights are being changed over to BA flight numbers. The relevance for Greece-bound travellers is that Aegean currently partners with BMI so you can buy a through ticket from say Rhodes to Aberdeen using BMI for the part inside the UK. This should continue for the rest of the summer timetable – up to the 23rd October, but may not do thereafter – in any case you may need a new ticket with BA flight details.
The BMI-Regional company which flies small jets between UK regional airports and also to close-by mainland European destinations has been sold to a consortium based in Aberdeen, and will probably be operated as a franchise of Flybe, so the flights will eventually have Flybe flight numbers. The BMI brand name goes with this sale. Again, it was possible to book connecting flights to Greece in conjunction with other airlines.
BMI-Baby, the third part of the BMI group is being run down rapidly and is likely to close altogether. This was a low-cost operator which this year was operating some domestic and summer sun routes out of Belfast, Birmingham and East Midlands. Most of the flights will cease on 12 September, some as early as June. They did fly to Greece but not to Rhodes or Kos.

Non Stop and one stop flights to Rhodes from Italy, summer 2012
NonStop flights to Rhodes from the UK 2012 – version 8
Non-Stop and One Stop to Rhodes from Cyprus – 2012
Connecting flights from Athens and Thessaloniki to Rhodes. summer 2012
NonStop or Direct to Rhodes from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden – 2012 version 1
Non Stop to Rhodes from Belgium and Luxembourg 2012 version 1
NonStop or Direct to Rhodes from the Netherlands 2012 – version 1
NonStop to Rhodes from Germany 2012 – Version 2
NonStop to Rhodes from Switzerland 2012, version 1
NonStop or Direct to Rhodes from Austria 2012, version 1

And now Proteus schedule for the rest of May has appeared, starting Sunday.
Leave Rhodes either 09:00 or 10:00 every day for Symi, leave Symi either 15:00 or 16:00 every day for Rhodes

Dodecanese Seaways have some additional sailings on Sunday 6th May only – the Express will operate Symi- Rhodes-Symi-Nissyros-Symi-Rhodes-Symi and return instead of the original schedule, and Panagia Skiadeni will do Rhodes-Panormitis-Symi-Rhodes to replace it.

Anyone on Symi fancy Sunday lunch in Nissyros?