Professional taxi drivers serving Paphos International Airport have given authorities an ultimatum: fix chronic parking and access problems or face an open-ended strike starting Friday, 25 September. In an urgent letter dated 19 September 2026, the St Leontios Airport Taxi Association warned that it will block the airport taxi rank unless three long-standing demands are met. The association argues that recent construction works have halved the rank’s capacity, forcing cabs to queue outside the perimeter and exposing drivers to fines. Drivers also want reinstatement of a drop-off ramp directly outside Arrivals—a facility removed during the pandemic—which they say now forces passengers, including the elderly and people with reduced mobility, to haul luggage 300 metres in extreme heat. Finally, the union is calling for “respectful treatment” from airport security and the Road Transport Department after a slew of penalty notices issued to taxis waiting in overflow areas. On Friday 18 September, drivers staged a five-hour warning stoppage that left some passengers scrambling for alternative transport to the resort town of Coral Bay and Paphos’s hotels. Hermes Airports, the private operator of both Paphos and Larnaca airports, says it is “reviewing operational layouts” but has not yet committed to reinstating the ramp. If the threatened strike goes ahead, up to 30 international arrivals and 6,000 passengers per day could be affected, based on current flight schedules. Global mobility managers with assignees arriving in Paphos over the weekend of 25-27 September should pre-book private transfers or advise staff to use the Intercity Bus shuttle to Limassol, then connect onwards. Cyprus’s Deputy Ministry of Tourism fears negative publicity at the tail-end of the high season. Industry bodies have urged a mediated solution comparable to the 2024 Larnaca taxi dispute, which was resolved when the government agreed to expand the rank and issue digital queue-management tokens. Similar smart-queue technology could be trialled in Paphos, alongside a temporary overflow rank, as a stop-gap to avert disruption.
Source: Pafos Press
