Phantom Phrowback: The 2023 Athens Airshow

Each September, Greece’s largest airshow, the Athens Air Show, draws in visitors from far and wide, with this providing a fairly unique opportunity for aviation enthusiasts to openly spot aircraft that are fairly rarely seen in other parts of the world, most notably, the vintage McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. Hosted at Tanagra Air Base to the north of Athens, this is relatively accessible, and seeing as it coincided with my late summer trip to Greece, I found the lure of the airshow too difficult to resist!

Whilst a list of static participants was not released, a flying programme was published several weeks beforehand which revealed an exciting show comprising of 33 display items between 1230 and 2000. These included displays from most areas of the Greek military, as well as international participants from Belgium, Denmark, France, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. Parting with a very reasonable €15 for a ticket for the Saturday, this was much cheaper than the only other airshow that I regularly attend, the Royal International Air Tattoo, and I soon began planning for ways to reach the airshow. Dependent on public transport, there were two ways for me to reach the airshow. One involved catching a shuttle bus from Doukissis Plakentias station on the Athens Metro, whilst the other involved catching the train from Athens to Oinoi Station, from where the airshow’s website advised that I could walk. Seeing as I would be staying in a hotel located almost right opposite the railway station, I decided it was sensible to go for the latter option.