Having recently returned to Athens, I thought forum readers would like to read about a trip I made. I firstly flew with BMI from Manchester terminal 3 to Heathrow on an A320, busy flight on-time nice hot sandwich served. The luggage was checked through onto the next flight but as BD and OA don’t have an agreement, I had to check-in again at the transit lounge at Heathrow terminal 2 for our seats.
I was quite excited as the Olympic service (OA 260) was operating with an A340. I found it quite strange as this is a long-haul aircraft and LHR-ATH is not a long-haul route. I wonder if this is because Olympic have shed a load of their long-haul services and so is left with an aircraft type not ideal for their purposes ?
The flight was about half-full, the cabin was unclean and shabby for a new aircraft, empty water bottle under the seat infront of mine. There was seat-back screens although these were mainly not operating correctly, a few had the route map showing. The crew looked basicly fed-up, I have never seen a stewardess before chewing gum while serving drinks, these were restricted to soft drinks, beer or wine, so no G & T for me ! The food was nothing special, The only good thing I can say about the flight was that it was on time.
My return was on a Wednesday night on OA 277 direct to Manchester. The aircraft was a 737-400 of Macedonian Airlines, again about half-full. The crew were better on this service as was the food, although I think some of the passengers would have struggled with the Octopus salad !! The flight was on-time which was good as it was quite a late service.
My conclusion to the experience was un-impressed, I would say that they felt like an airline on there way out and not well-place to cope with the 2004 Olympics in Athens. The new Athens Airport is nice and a huge improvment to have international and domestic operations under the same roof. However the infrastruture to the airport and indeed for the forthcoming Olympics are still under construction.
Several years back I flew with Easyjet to Athens and in comparison they were much better, Its a shame a national airline that has been around for a long-time is so bad. Has anyone else flown with Olympic before, maybe when they were experiencing better times ?
Carl
By: carl727uk - 2nd June 2003 at 10:48
Well lets hope someone can turn OA around, but they better start soon if theres tobe any improvements for the games. Thanks to all you who contributed to my report.
Carl
By: wysiwyg - 1st June 2003 at 12:33
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By: wysiwyg - 1st June 2003 at 12:31
I can’t find anything doing a search but I had heard from several sources that an Olympic 732 had departed the runway and ended up in the drink at Corfu in the 80’s.
By: greekdude1 - 31st May 2003 at 23:56
I don’t think they’ve lost any 732’s. I recall an OA Dornier 228 having an incident on an island a few years back, perhaps that’s what you there thiking of?
By: wysiwyg - 31st May 2003 at 22:47
Scud = 737-200
By: EGNM - 31st May 2003 at 20:48
Scud – what u reffering to with this a/c?
By: greekdude1 - 31st May 2003 at 20:45
If you are speaking Greek, wysiwyg, then it is pronounced with a hard ‘c’, Makedonia. However, in English, it is with a soft ‘c’, Masedonia. That’s as much as I know. What’s a scud? Not the missle, I presume!
By: wysiwyg - 31st May 2003 at 09:29
I’ve always been told to refer to the currently Greel region with a hard C and the new region with a soft C, eg Macedonia and (phonetically) Makadonia.
Can anyone confim about the scud crash in Corfu a few years ago?
By: wysiwyg - 31st May 2003 at 09:29
double post, oops!
By: greekdude1 - 30th May 2003 at 21:38
Mecedonia, the sovereign country, has only been so for less than a decade. Once the former Yugoslavia broke up, what was left was Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Macedonia. The latter, I suppose, couldn’t find a new creative name to give themselves, so they just adopted the name of the region as the name of their country.
By: Saab 2000 - 30th May 2003 at 20:27
It is all to do with history. It is an historic region in the south east of Europe, in the Balkan Peninsula. Half of the region lies in northern and northeastern Greece and the country of Macedonia plus a small portion of Bulgaria make up the region.
I always found it rather funny when I saw the Macedonian aircraft with Greek registrations and how they seemed so regular in Greece, then I realised it reffered to the region rather than country.
By: mongu - 30th May 2003 at 18:44
How confusing – their neighbouring country is called Macedonia and so is a region of their own country!
By: EGNM - 30th May 2003 at 14:19
Originally posted by Saab 2000
Mongu,
Macedonia (or Makedonía) is a region of Greece up in the north east area on the boarders with the actual country of Macedonia and Bulgaria.
ah now i see! On my way down to the eastern greek islands (Rhodes, Kos etc) Makedonia control is often online before i’m passed back over to LGGG_E_CTR
By: steve rowell - 30th May 2003 at 09:07
Thanks for the great report,i’ll add O/A to my list of no flys
By: Saab 2000 - 30th May 2003 at 08:50
Mongu,
Macedonia (or Makedonía) is a region of Greece up in the north east area on the boarders with the actual country of Macedonia and Bulgaria.
By: greekdude1 - 29th May 2003 at 20:51
S. Africa does indeed have a big Greek population, Mongu. New York is the most populous Greek city in the U.S., possibly N. America. Montreal and Toronto also have quite a few, as OA serves those 2 cities in tandem. They SYD/MEL withdrawal continues to baffel me, especially as the summer season draws near, where winter in Australia causes the Greeks to flock to the home country. It was always difficult to get a ticket on OA this time of year, through the month of August. Clearly the bigwigs don’t know their arsehole from a hole in the ground.
By: mongu - 29th May 2003 at 20:43
South Africa also has a large Greek population – at least judging by the number of Greek restaurants!
I’m not sure about New York, but that city has lots of every conceivable ethnic group in the world so there’s probably lots of Greeks there too.
Given OA still serves JNB and JFK, the Australia withdrawal seems very strange!
By: greekdude1 - 29th May 2003 at 20:35
Macedonian Airlines is a subsidiary of OA, operated by OA aircraft and crew. There really is no difference between them and the mainline carrier. Carl, there is an enormous amount of Greeks in Australia, at least a million from what I’ve been told. Believe me when I say, Olympic could have the worst service in the world, and the Greeks will fly them over Singapore, Thai and Emirates, just because its Olympic. The new ATH is wonderful! Very nice facilities, good shops, very clean, and decent security, unlike the old ATH, which was a $hithole in every sense of the word. As far as the Olympics go, Carl, they will NEVER BE READY. The road that connects ATH with downtown, is about 5 miles long, if that. They’ve made no progress whatsoever, since I was there in ’01, 3 months after the new airport opened. Everything else is a mess. I sincerely hope the Olympic committee wakes up, and awards the games to L.A., which has all the facilities to accomodate the games at moments’ notice (not to mention they were the last games to actually make a profit). You mention the metro, that is the only thing that is ACTUALLY READY. All those years, there was only one line. Now, they have 3, and the 2 new lines are very nice. As far as transportation goes, you can take the bus from 2 stations (Ethniki Amina and Syntagma) and only costs 2.5 Euros (has to be the cheapest in Europe). The metro goes from Piraeas with a switch to any of those stations. In fact, the same ticket covers the train and the bus. Lastly, I don’t think reducing the amount of long haul routes is the answer. Olympics long haul routes are always full, because as I mentioned before, the cities they serve on the long haul cater to a large Greek population and they’ll fly Olympic regardless of the service. What needs to be done is eliminating lots of ‘the brass.’ Right now, they probably have 10 people where they only need 1. That’s the majority of the problem.
By: mongu - 29th May 2003 at 18:59
Originally posted by Saab 2000
I think the plan being taken by the Greek government will be to liquidate Olympic and build a new airline out of Macedonian Airlines with slimmer operations. That means less aircraft and no more long haul operations.
Forgive me if I’m being a little dim, but Macedonian Airlines is….Macedonian, isn’t it?
By: carl727uk - 29th May 2003 at 16:41
Im glad my little report generated so much interest. Its a sad situation that they are in such a mess, Im aware that there is a huge Greek expatriate community in Australia which they are not serving, however with the service levels they are currently offering I presume most people would elect a better airline for such a long flight.
I read recently that there is quite a few English expats in Corfu, at one time OA operated direct from there into LHR. now they have a much longer journey routing via Athens and apparently there is little chance of that route being reinstated. Easyjet have been approached to launch a service I understand.
Athens airports is now quite a joy, not too busy, all under one roof, bright and airy, if OA were better they would be a good carrier to use for transfer connections. I don’t know if they are timing their services to the islands better now, they used tobe unattractive.
As regards to the Olympics I can’t see them ever being ready, the roads, the metro and apparently most of the stadiums are far from complete.
One last thing if you ever try to get a taxi from Piraeus to the airport at about 4.30pm its a night-mare, tried four none wanted to take me. There is an express bus which is fine, its just finding where it stops that is difficult.
Carl
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May 28, 2003 at 11:59 am