Ok, I don’t even want to get started on Olympic Airways, Olympics in Athens, or even political red tape in Greece, at large. The post would be so long, nobody would want to read it. I’m just going to make a few comments to some of the points made in the thread. First off, yes Zippo, OA has a great safety record. I believe you are correct in that they’ve never lost a jet and it’s been a while since they lost a prop plane. It’s also understood that they have tremendous pilots. Unfortunately, that’s where the ‘good’ ends. Everything else is ‘bad’ and ‘ugly.’ I’ve never flown OA on segments longer than an hour, so I really can’t comment on good or bad service in those regards. However, it doesn’t surprise me one bit, that you were extremely unhappy with your service, Carl. If you had told that story and asked, “Guess the airline,” I would have immediately known the answer. They’ve been operating at a loss for about 30 years. They have very strong unions and everytime something is done, it gets shot down, or there are strikes. They have too many people in management positions. They probably have 2 or 3 times more employees than they actually need. They have some new aircraft: 4 A340’s are less than 4 years old, A300-600’s are around 10, plus a few 717’s. However, everything else is old. They canceled orders for new 738’s a few years back. If some of you recall, BA sent in a team called Speedwing a few years back led by Rod Lynch to try and turn them around. He lasted about 6 months or so, because the poor guy couldn’t get anything done will all the B.S. that was going on! Ironic how OA brass (bunch of morons) claimed that the airline actually digressed while Speedwing was in there. Had that worked, it would have allowed them to join Oneworld, but of course that never surfaced. It’s sad that a national carrier with a route network and location (Greek islands generate lots of tourism) that has so much potential, is just so bad. In times like these, who has enough capitol to buy a financially troubled airline? No wonder they can’t privatize. I’ve gone on long enough, I could go on for a lot longer.
P.S. Carl, as far as them using the A340 on that route, they traditionally used the A300 to LHR, but they pulled out of Australia about 6 months ago, so that freed up 1 of their 4 A340’s to be used on other services. Since they only had 3 long distance routes remaining after that (JFK, YUL/YYZ, JNB), they replaced 1 of the usual 2 or 3 A300-600 LHR flights with an A340 flight.
Sign In
