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By Nefeli Papacosta London is home to over 300,000 Cypriots and the Heathrow to Larnaca air route which seems to last a life time, is a flight endured by many either via the state owned Cyprus Airways, privately owned Aegean or low-cost airlines Ryanair and Easyjet. Cyprus tourism this year reported a painful 10% dip in bookings with the peak month of August reporting 324,217 tourists in comparison to 2012 363,573. It doesn’t take a genius to start working out that people are beginning to get fed up of air fares to Cyprus that are the equivalent to flights to New York and Dubai. How can it be justified by the Cyprus tourism authorities, the Cypriot government and the airlines flying to Cyprus to charge air passengers ridiculous air fares. To demonstrate the point I tried to book the following with airlines: London to Larnaca Dates 11 November returning 14 November 2024 all flights from Heathrow Aegean Airlines website £326.40 (£106.40 taxes) Cyprus Airways website £327.77 (124.40 taxes) British Airways website £ 221.40 (£81.40 taxes) It seems to me, being a Cypriot from north London, that if your economy is on its knees, which it is in Cyprus, why doesn’t the Cypriot government reduce air taxation, liberalise and allow more operators to fly to Cyprus from the UK, and then boost tourist numbers. If I wanted to go to Alicante in Spain for the same time I would be paying: Stansted to Alicante with Ryanair £79.98 GBP (with taxes) Unless the Cypriot government starts really getting serious about providing real value to tourists, then I am afraid many of the Cypriot Diaspora will be forced to look at other destinations for our summer holidays. On another point, I still cannot believe that Cyprus Airways is near bankruptcy when each time I fly to Cyprus the planes are packed solid.
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