Planning / Flying or ferries to the Greek islands
Flying or ferries to the Greek islands
Should you fly or take the ferry to the Greek islands?
Fly when the island has an airport and the crossing is long; take the ferry when it does not, or when the crossing is short. Flights save hours and cost more. Ferries cost less, run more often, and carry cars. Kefalonia is about an hour from Athens by air; Poros has no airport at all, so the ferry is the only route there.
The honest version of this decision is that it is usually made for you. Most Greek islands have no airport, so the ferry is not the budget option there — it is the only option. The question only arises on the minority of islands with a runway, and on those it comes down to how long the crossing is and what you are bringing with you.
Where a flight exists, what it buys is hours. Kefalonia is about an hour from Athens by air, and the island sits far enough down the Ionian that the sea alternative is a different kind of day altogether. Where no flight exists the calculation simply disappears: Poros has no airport, and a fast boat from Piraeus takes about an hour — which no flight could beat once you add the drive out to the airport, the bag drop, and the wait at each end.
That is the point most itineraries get wrong. Flight time is not journey time. A short hop saves less than its duration suggests, because the airport overhead lands at both ends and does not shrink to match the distance. On a long crossing the saving is real and worth paying for. On a short one the ferry frequently wins outright, and it leaves from Piraeus rather than from a terminal well inland of the city.
The ferry also does things a plane cannot. It carries a car. It runs several times a day on the main routes, which means a missed sailing is an inconvenience rather than a lost day. And it puts you at a port inside the town instead of an airfield outside it. Against all that, it is slower and more exposed to the weather.
On cost, this site will not pretend to a comparison it has not logged. The record holds one dated airline figure — a $114.73 Sky Express charge on July 10, 2026 — and that is a card charge rather than a per-seat fare: it does not tell us how many seats it covered, or what else was bundled into it. There is no ferry fare in the record at all. When both sides exist with dates attached, the comparison appears here and on what Greece costs. Until then, decide this one on time and on cars, not on a price either of us is guessing at.
Common questions
No, and most do not. The ferry is the default way to reach the islands rather than the fallback. Poros is the example on this site: no airport at all, so the fast boat from Piraeus is the route.
Two of the islands this site covers have airports. Kefalonia has EFL near Svoronata, about an hour from Athens, with domestic connections and seasonal international flights. Naxos has one too — we flew in on July 15, 2025, scheduled 11:30 to 12:15, so about 45 minutes in the air. Poros has no airport at all, and Tinos we reached by sea.
Less than the flight time suggests. A short hop still needs the drive to the airport, the bag drop, security, and the wait — and that overhead lands at both ends without shrinking. On a long crossing the saving is real; on a short one the ferry often wins outright.
This site cannot answer that from evidence yet. Our record holds exactly one dated airline figure — a $114.73 Sky Express charge on July 10, 2026 — and no ferry fare at all. That airline figure is a card charge rather than a per-seat fare: it does not tell us how many seats or what extras it covered. The comparison publishes when both sides of it are documented and dated.
When the crossing is short, when you are bringing a car, or when frequency matters more than speed. Ferries run through the day on the main routes and land you at a port in the town rather than an airfield outside it.