Heraklion to Athens is 309 km and about 48 minutes in the air on a light jet – a domestic Greek sector with no border and nothing to file. Indicative price from €5 800 for the whole aircraft, one way. The flying is the easy half; in July and August the departure hour is decided by what Heraklion can fit around its scheduled traffic. A written quotation follows inside 30 minutes, and +357 95 119759 answers at any hour.
Off the island and onto the mainland in under an hour. Most parties fly this leg because Athens is where the rest of the world connects, and the sensible thing is to book it at the same time as whatever follows it. Whole aircraft, single seats and empty legs, arranged around the clock.
REQUEST A QUOTEForty-eight minutes north across the Sea of Crete, from an island field that spends its whole summer full to a mainland field that never closes. Nothing about the aircraft is difficult on 309 km; a light jet does it with room to spare. What deserves your attention is the departure end. Heraklion is Crete’s principal airport, shares its runway with military use and carries heavy scheduled traffic from June to September, and a private departure is fitted into a short window granted after that traffic has been served. Athens, at the other end, offers full business-aviation handling twenty-four hours a day, which is why nobody ever worries about the arrival.
One arrival field and no argument about it. The choice on this route is made at the Cretan end, and it is made by where on the island you are staying rather than by anything to do with aeroplanes.
| Field | Code | Role on this route | What decides it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heraklion | HER / LGIR | departure | Crete’s principal airport, shared with military use and heavily loaded with scheduled traffic all summer. A general-aviation departure is filed against a short window and granted after the airline movements, which is why we ask for the hour rather than promise it. It does, however, take larger aircraft than the Cyclades fields and will usually park one – the reason a Crete trip often prices better than a Cyclades trip of the same length. |
| Athens | ATH / LGAV | arrival | Eleftherios Venizelos, full business-aviation handling at any hour of the day or night. Availability at this end is almost never the constraint, which is worth knowing when a late departure from Crete is the only one on offer. |
| Chania | CHQ / LGSA | alternative departure, western Crete | The right field if you are staying in the west of the island. The road from Chania to Heraklion is about two and a half hours, so if that is where your last night is, leave from there instead of driving across Crete to catch an aircraft. |
| Sitia | JSH / LGST | situational, eastern Crete | A small field at the far eastern end, useful for that corner of the island and subject to aircraft type and handling. Worth raising at the enquiry rather than assuming it. |
Slot and ground-time conditions at the island fields are published operating rules and change from season to season. We confirm them against your dates rather than against a general rule.
Three hundred kilometres asks very little of an aeroplane. The question on the way home is luggage, because a fortnight on Crete generates more of it than the fortnight’s worth that arrived.
Up to seven seats and the type most often placed on short Mediterranean sectors. The usual first answer here, and the one with the most forgiving hold of the three.
Phenom 300 ›Four to six with luggage, easier to place at short notice in the season and cheaper to run over three hundred kilometres. Often what is actually free on an August morning.
Citation CJ2 ›The older light jet flying the same sectors. Less cabin, lower cost, and worth asking about whenever the hour you leave is not fixed.
Citation Bravo ›From €5 800 one way for the whole aircraft. That is our own floor rather than a quotation, and it is worth saying how it is built.
No published price for this city pair has reached us from a source we would be willing to reprint, in either direction. So the figure is arithmetic we can show you: two hours charged, because a two-hour minimum applies on a sector shorter than that, at the published starting rate of €2 900 an hour for the light-jet cabin (Eurosky, 19.02.2026), rounded down. It is the same floor we publish on the mainland-to-island page, for the good reason that the cabin class, the minimum and the flight time are all the same whichever way round you fly it.
For checking any quotation you hold, ours included, the published hourly ranges for light jets in Europe run from €4 600 to €7 300, with a starting figure of €2 900 quoted from February 2026 and a dollar-quoted band of $3 750 to $4 200 an hour from August 2026. Those are other people’s numbers, reprinted so you have something to measure against; none of them is our offer.
The item that actually moves your quotation is what the aircraft does around the flight. On a forty-eight-minute sector the flying is the smallest line on the invoice and the positioning is often the largest, so the fair question to ask anyone quoting you is whether the repositioning sits inside the figure. Ours does, and we will tell you which legs it covers.
GET A FIRM PRICEThird-party published rates are quoted for comparison only. They are not our prices and they are not a quotation. The only price we stand behind is the written one against your dates.
June to September is the peak at both ends, and on this route the constraint is slots and parking rather than whether an aeroplane exists.
Saturdays in August are the hardest days of the year on this pairing – the changeover day for the whole island. If the plan has any give in it, fly midweek and the same trip becomes an ordinary one. May and October are the value weeks: good availability, everything still open, and quotations that land closer to the floor above.
From November to April the corridor thins out and handling and services at the island end are reduced, so it is worth confirming with us what is actually open before planning around it. In that season a week’s notice is plenty; in August, ask about the slot and about whether the aircraft can wait before you settle on a type.
Almost nobody stops in Athens. Here are the three continuations we are most often asked to quote alongside this one, and booking them together is cheaper than booking them in turn.
The common way home from a Greek summer, and a sector we publish in its own right with its own aircraft and airport notes.
Athens to London ›West along the Mediterranean when Crete was the first half of the holiday rather than the whole of it.
Athens to Nice ›The long leg east, and the usual shape when the islands were a stop on the way somewhere further.
Athens to Dubai ›Tell us your dates and how many of you there are. Your dedicated flight advisor will come back with aircraft options and a firm price.
All published routes are listed on the route index. Also useful: the fleet, current empty legs, jet sharing.