Clearing Customs by Private Aircraft

The question is customs, not passports

Arriving in Greece involves two different checks, and confusing them causes most of the trouble.

Passport control applies to arrivals from outside the Schengen area. It establishes who is entering.

Customs applies to arrivals from outside the customs territory of the European Union. It establishes what is entering, including the aircraft itself.

For private aviation, customs is the check that limits the itinerary. It is not present at every Greek airport, and at several of the airports people want it is not present all year.

Where customs sits all year

Six airports have customs through the year: Athens, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Chania, Corfu and Rhodes.

Any of them can take a first landing from outside the Union on any date. In practice Athens takes most of these flights. There the formalities are completed inside the general aviation terminal, the building for private and business flights, rather than in the main building. The guide what an FBO is describes the arrangement.

Where it sits only in season

A second group has customs seasonally, broadly from 2 April to 31 October. It includes Mykonos, Santorini, Paros, Milos, Naxos, Skiathos, Kos, Kalamata, Zakynthos, Kefalonia, Samos, Chios, Mytilene and Kavala, among others.

Inside those dates a flight from outside the Union can land directly on the island. Outside them it cannot, and the aircraft has to clear customs on the mainland or at one of the six first.

The dates are set by the authorities and they change. Ask the handler, the company that looks after the aircraft on the ground, about the specific date. Do not rely on what was true the previous summer.

The lounge you may not skip

At Mykonos, Corfu and Kos there is a small separate building for general and business aviation, with security, customs and immigration inside. General and business aviation flights must use it.

This affects the running of an arrival rather than its legality. A party expecting to step from the aircraft into a car will pass through a building first. At Mykonos in August that building is busy with everybody else doing the same thing at the same hour. The process is short, and it is not optional.

What it does to an itinerary

Three consequences are worth planning around.

The first landing is the one with limits. Once the aircraft and the party are inside the Union, flights between Greek airports are domestic and the customs question falls away.

The months either side of the season change the map. A flight arriving from outside the Union in March or November has six airports available, not 20. An island arrival in those months generally means a stop on the mainland first.

Everybody clears customs, including the crew and the aircraft. Customs formalities attach to the flight as well as the passengers. The handler files the general declarations and the crew documents as part of the process.

What to settle with the handler

1. Where the first landing is, and whether customs is present there on your date.
2. Whether the season applies to the island airport in the brief, and the alternative if it does not.
3. Which documents the crew must have filed, and by when.
4. What is being carried. Firearms for a shoot, large sums of cash, a pet, high-value goods and artwork each need their own declaration. Each is a reason to arrive at a full customs airport by choice rather than by accident.
5. How long the process takes at that specific airport in August. An honest handler answers in minutes, not adjectives.