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One-Way Car Hire Heraklion to Chania: Drop at the Other Airport
Land at one end of Crete, fly out of the other, and let the car cover the island between them.
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Heraklion Car Hire Review
Insurance options available on all cars · TPL · CDW · SCDW · Full CDW
Drivers who started at one airport and finished at the other
Crossing the island on one hire is ordinary enough that plenty of suppliers in Heraklion have a routine for it, and awkward enough that the routine is worth knowing first. Three drivers, three different surprises.
“The charge for leaving the car at Chania sat on the quote from the first screen. That was the one part of a one-way booking I had expected to go wrong.”
“Two of the cheaper suppliers would not take the car back at the far end at all. Finding that out early is what stopped me booking the wrong one.”
“We gave the drive a whole day instead of a morning. Lunch in Rethymno turned into the afternoon and nobody in the car minded.”
Setting the far end of the hire
A one-way is not a different product from the car you would have booked anyway. It is the same vehicle and the same contract with a second place written into it, and the search above asks for that second place in a box of its own. Set Heraklion as the pickup and Chania as the drop-off, and what comes back is the list of suppliers willing to end the rental 140 km west.
What changes is who agrees. A car handed back at Chania is no longer where its owner keeps it, so somebody has to bring it home or let it out again from there. Some companies do that every week of the season. Others decline one-way hires entirely, which is why the list is shorter than for the same dates with both ends in Heraklion.
The drop charge belongs to whichever of them you pick. There is no island rate for it, no figure this page could honestly print, and no version of it that we set. It travels with the quote, which is the only place you should ever meet it.
The two ends, and who decides what
- Pickup
- Heraklion, HER or the town
- Drop-off
- Chania, 140 km west
- Who sets the drop charge
- the supplier, never us
- Where you read it
- in the quote, before paying
- Who offers it
- some of the listing, not all
The road west, and how long it really takes
One road does the whole job. The National Road, the VOAK, runs along the north coast from Heraklion through Rethymno to Chania, changing character as it goes: long stretches built to motorway standard, then older two-lane sections where slower traffic moves onto the hard shoulder and expects you to come past. That habit unsettles visitors more than anything else here, and the shoulder, the goats and the mountain roads all belong to driving in Crete.
The distance is about 140 kilometres, which on a map reads like ninety minutes and in practice does not. Two and a half hours of driving is the figure to plan around, more if you leave Heraklion in the morning traffic. Nobody should attempt it as a dash to a boarding gate. How the keys change hands at the eastern end has a page of its own, collecting a car at HER.
Rethymno, about 80 kilometres out, is where the drive breaks in half, and it beats a petrol station: a Venetian old town, a harbour, lunch that is not eaten standing up. Give the crossing a full day if the flights allow one, and two if you want both old towns rather than a glimpse of each.
140 km
from Heraklion west to Chania
80 km
to Rethymno, where the drive breaks
2
airports on Crete, one at each end
120
cars counted in the listing here
The number missing from that row is the drop charge, and it is missing on purpose. It is quoted with the car rather than with the island.
Handing the car back at Chania
The return is the half people think about least and the half that goes wrong most, because nothing at the far end matches the place you started. Four things are worth settling before you drive off.
The handover is a yard, not a counter
CHQ is small, and the suppliers working it usually meet you in a car park or at a yard minutes away rather than at a desk in the hall. The voucher names the place and the person. Read it the night before, not while circling the terminal.
Ring the Chania end the day before
The people who take the car back are not the ones who handed you the keys that morning, and the two ends do not always share a diary. One short call fixes the time and the meeting point.
The fuel rule is read where you finish
Whatever the contract says about the tank is checked at Chania, not where you collected. Fill up on the approach rather than back along the coast, and keep the receipt. It is the cheapest argument you will ever win.
Allow more time than a desk would need
Somebody has to arrive, look the car over and sign it off, and in high season they are doing it between other jobs. Build that wait into the gap before check-in.
Chania to Heraklion is its own booking
The reverse is priced on its own terms
Plenty of trips run the other way round: a charter into CHQ, a week working east, a flight home out of HER. That booking is not this one read backwards. Start the search with Chania as the pickup and Heraklion as the drop-off, because the supplier list and the charge are worked out fresh for the direction you travel.
The same road, read east
The identical coast in reverse, with the traffic thickening as you come into Heraklion rather than thinning out behind you.
Rethymno still splits it
The stop that breaks the drive sits between the two, nearer the Chania end, and works as well going east as it does going west.
Decide the two airports before the car
If the flights are not booked yet, an island crossed once beats the same coast driven out and back from one base. Fix which end you land at and which you leave from, and the hire becomes the easy part of the plan.
More Heraklion car hire options
The one-way, question by question
With a good number of the suppliers here, yes. Set the pickup city and the drop-off city separately in the search and the list narrows to the companies that will take the car back at the western end. Not every supplier sells it, so treat a one-way as a filter on who you choose rather than an extra added at the end.
There is no single figure, and any page that gives you one is guessing. The charge is set by the company that owns the car, it moves with the dates, the direction and the exact drop point, and it reaches you attached to the quote before you pay. Compare it between suppliers the way you compare a daily rate.
About 140 kilometres of north coast on the VOAK, which is two and a half hours of driving rather than the ninety minutes a map suggests. Traffic at either end adds to that in summer. Most people who enjoy the crossing give it a whole day and stop at Rethymno, roughly 80 kilometres from here.
Usually in a car park or a yard close to the airport rather than at a counter inside it, with a person who has driven out to meet you. The voucher names the spot. Call the day before to confirm the time, and allow longer than you would for a desk staffed all day.
Yes, and it is quoted as its own booking rather than this one reversed. Set Chania as the pickup city and the eastern airport as the drop-off. The suppliers who agree and the charge they ask for are decided by the direction the car ends up travelling, so the two are rarely mirror images.
Put Chania in the drop-off box
The search takes a different city for the end of the hire. Add your dates with Chania as the drop-off and Heraklion Drive shows which suppliers in Heraklion will really take the car back at the far end, with the charge attached to the quote.
Compare one-way cars