Passengers traffic of Greek airlines Aegean and Olympic Air recorded a 21% increase during June 2014, with total passengers exceeding one million people. The two long-time competitors became one group in October 2013, when Aegean Airlines acquired 100% of Olympic Air shares, in a deal cleared by the European Commission.

According to an Aegean press release, June’s considerable increase in passengers traffic reinforced the 2014 first half’s trend for the whole network, which also recorded a 16% increase, adding 600,000 more passengers which rose to a total of 4.3 million.

Aegean said that domestic passenger traffic increased by 19% both for June and the first half of 2014. Regarding the international passengers traffic, the company recorded a 23% increase from all its Greek bases.

Aegean noted that international flights’ passengers traffic especially to/from Athens were up by 22% in June, since new service destinations were added in company’s network, such as Zurich, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Birmingham, Hamburg, Marseille, Nantes, Catania, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Amman and Smyrna, and the increase of passengers traffic to traditional destinations.

During June, the Heraklion, Thessaloniki and Rhodes island bases of Aegean recorded an increase of international passengers traffic by 47%, 11% and 39%, respectively.