Greece Pushes Back Deadline for Kasteli Airport Bids One More Time

The new airport is scheduled to replace the existing Heraklion Airport “Nikos Kazantzakis.” Photo © heraklionairport.net

Greece has once again pushed back the deadline for binding bids to finance, build and operate a new airport on the island of Crete.

Impression of Kastelli airport.

The new deadline has been set back to September 30, following the first delay that saw it move from February 23 to May 6 and then to June 27. Last week, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had said that “the binding financial offers for the new international airport of Heraklion, Crete, in Kasteli will be submitted in late July”.

The new deadline was posted on the government’s Diavgeia website by the Greek Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks. In the same decision, the ministry noted that the terms on which investors would submit their bids were approved, following the “re-evaluation of existing financial, technical and environmental aspects”.

Kasteli airport, a 850-million-euro project, is set to be operational in 2018 and expected to become Greece’s fourth-biggest airport in terms of traffic, replacing Crete’s outdated Nikos Kazantzakis airport in Heraklion.