ELEFTHERIOS VENIZELOS international airport in Athens opened to much fanfare 12 years ago. But it already looks like it has seen better days. Built to serve 21m passengers a year, it has suffered a steep decline in traffic since the onset of the financial crisis. It now handles just 12m passengers a year—25% fewer than in 2007. That number is likely to fall again in 2013. Paint flakes from the airport’s 24 jet bridges, of which perhaps only 10 are now in regular use. To save money, the air conditioning stays off until June.
Foreign airlines have fled. Delta axed winter flights to New York last year, leaving Greece without a direct connection to America for the first time in nearly 70 years. United Airlines, Thai Airways, Gulf Air and Czech Airlines have also left. Last year Singapore Airlines moved its regional operation to Istanbul. Olympic Air’s brush with bankruptcy deprived it of its entire long-haul network, including routes to Dubai, New York and Johannesburg. Intercontinental connectivity is far worse than at other southern European airports like Madrid and Rome. Although both the airport’s full-sized runways are capable of handling the Airbus A380 superjumbo, 59% of the airport’s traffic is now carried on narrow-bodies and turboprops to domestic destinations. 

Greece’s cash-strapped government is desperate to prevent its oversized airport from becoming a white elephant. It thinks Chinese money will help. On a visit to Beijing in May, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras promised to unravel the red carpet for Chinese investors, who already run part of the port of Piraeus and who plan to redevelop a large, disused airport in the centre of Athens. Chinese tourists are also becoming familiar in popular resorts like Santorini and Mykonos. Their numbers have doubled in three years and a new advertising campaign on Chinese television aims to attract more.
To cement these links, the government wants Athens to have direct flights to Beijing. “We will be your gateway to Europe,” said Mr Samaras. Spare capacity leaves Chinese and south-east Asian airlines with plenty of room for onward connections to other European destinations, he says. The government has submitted route development proposals to several Chinese airlines, though Greece’s Kathimerini newspaper claims that Air China and Hainan Airlines are uninterested.
In fact, relying on foreign airlines’ fickle business plans is rarely a smart move. The government was delighted last November when Qatar Airways announced plans to launch a new daily service between Athens and New York, possibly bringing the A380 to Greece for the first time. But Qatar dropped its plans in April. Many voters openly question whether Greece, about to embark on a fire-sale of state assets, including regional airports and hotels, can trust non-European partners to deliver on their promises.
In reality, beggars can’t be choosers. Greece’s tourist industry—which makes up a quarter of its GDP—desperately needs support from foreign airlines and investors. So the government has also abandoned a long tradition of protecting domestic carriers from foreign competition. To some extent, the plan has worked: Delta has resumed seasonal services to New York this summer, and Air Canada will serve Athens using its new low-cost outfit, Air Canada Rouge, rather than dropping flights altogether.
As Gulliver reluctantly departed the Greek sunshine this week, there were fewer than a dozen planes on the tarmac, and no queue for take-off. It will take a determined effort by the government to ensure that Athens’s airport doesn’t meet the same fate as the city’s nearby Olympic Park, which was completed in 2004 but now looks almost as ruined as the Parthenon.