Ellinikon International Airport

History

Redevelopment

2004 Olympic Summer Games

Hellenikon Metropolitan Park

Accidents and incidents

• 21 June 1959 – Following a tire burst upon landing, a fire erupted when debris ruptured the fuel lines of a Royal Canadian Air Force Canadair North Star that was returning to Canada.
• 2 August 1961 – SAA Boeing 707-344 ZS-CKE scraped a wall and hit a tree during takeoff. After arriving in Nairobi, it was discovered substantial damage was present. The plane was repaired.
• 26 December 1968 – Two terrorists opened fire and threw grenades at El Al Flight 253, one passenger died.
• 8 December 1969 – Olympic Airways Flight 954, a Douglas DC-6, crashed into Mount Paneio while on approach to the airport. All 90 passengers and crew on board died, making the accident the worst aviation disaster involving a DC-6.
• 21 October 1972 – An Olympic Airways NAMC YS-11A-500 that was operating a domestic scheduled Kerkyra–Athens passenger service crashed into the sea on approach to the airport in poor visibility. There were 53 people aboard, of whom 36 passengers and the co-pilot drowned, while 13 passengers and the remaining three crew members were rescued.
• 22 January 1973 – A Piaggio P.136L-2 amphibious plane crashed shortly after takeoff from runway 33. The crash occurred as a result of the reversing of the aileron connecting cables during the installation of a new control column on the plane. Alexander Onassis, one of the aircraft's three passengers, died as a result of injuries sustained in the accident.
• 5 August 1973 – The 1973 Athens Hellinikon International Airport attack, in which two Palestinian militants claiming affiliation with the Black September Organization opened fire on a passenger lounge, killing three and wounding 55.
• 17 December 1973 – Stopover of hijacked Lufthansa Flight 303, a flight from Italy to Kuwait.
• 3 December 1975 – TMA Boeing 747-123F OD-AGC landed on runway 15 with just 5,000 feet of pavement remaining and applied thrust reversers late, causing the plane to go off the end of the runway and onto a public road. All 7 onboard survived and the plane was repaired.
• 9 August 1978 – Olympic Airways Flight 411, a Boeing 747, experienced an engine failure on takeoff but returned safely without passenger or crew injuries.
• 8 October 1979 – Swissair Flight 316, a Douglas DC-8-62, overran the runway on landing, inbound from Geneva. Both the port wing and the tail separated from the fuselage before the aircraft came to rest. A fire that broke, 14 of the 154 people on board died.
• 14 June 1985 – TWA Flight 847 was hijacked shortly after takeoff from Athens, and the passengers were held hostage for three days. One was murdered.
• 24 March 1992 – A Golden Star Air Cargo Boeing 707-320C that was operating an Amsterdam-Athens cargo service, struck Mount Hymettus, southeast of the airport, on a visual approach. There were seven reported fatalities.

Climate

In popular culture

• A sequence of the 1986 Menahem Golan movie The Delta Force where one of the Lebanese terrorists exits a taxi was shot at Ellinikon's eastern terminal. The Athens airport interiors, however, were filmed in Terminal 1 of Ben Gurion Airport in Israel.
• The 2015 Christoforos Papakaliatis movie Worlds Apart used the East Terminal building and apron as a camp for refugees, as well as the exterior and interior of the abandoned Boeing 747-200 parked there.
• In 2018, the music video for "Tomame" by Greek pop star Eleni Foureira was partially filmed in the airport.
• The sci-fi short film Third Kind by Yorgos Zois is set in the airport, in the aftermath of the refugee crisis, where the belongings of the refugees are the props of the movie.
• In 2019, a challenge for the 2020 season of the Belgian reality TV show De Mol was filmed on the runway and apron.