Eleftherios Venizelos Airport
The Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport, which began operation in March 2001, serves the city of Athens in Greece. It is located between the towns of Markopoulo, Koropi, Spata and Loutsa, about 20 km east of Athens city centre (30 km by road, due to intervening hills).
It is named after Eleftherios Venizelos, the Cretan Prime Minister, who was prominent in the Cretan rising against the Ottoman occupation of Crete in 1896. It has the IATA airport code ATH (which it overtook from Ellinikon International Airport which it replaced) and the ICAO airport code LGAV.
The runways are approximately 4 kilometres in length. The Airport was developed by public-private partnership. Greece holds 55% of the shares.
It is connected to the venues of the 2004 Olympics by railway.
Robotic security
The new airport is equipped with two robotic systems (robots "Hercules" and "Ulysses") capable of handling suspect devices, designed to protect the lives of individuals as well as airport spaces, by safely identifying and removing explosives.
Hercules was donated by the Ada-Air
