Globe Merchant Travel Blog

ATHENS — Greece’s national carrier Olympic Airlines which was bought by Greek and United Arab Emirates investment group Marfin announced Saturday that starting Tuesday most of its flights will be operated by its successor Olympic Air.

The new airline was originally set to start operations on Thursday “but for reasons related to adapting and transferring passengers to Olympic Air flights, we decided to make this succession on Tuesday, a day when traffic at Athens airport is not that heavy,” Olympic Airlines spokesman Michalis Miyakis told AFP.

Olympic Air will take over most of the 28 international flights and 26 domestic flights previously operated by Olympic Airlines, he added.

Any passengers holding tickets on Olympic Airlines after September 29 can travel on Olympic Air or with other carriers at no additional expense, the airline said in statement.

Earlier this month Olympic Air said it had signed a deal with US carrier Delta Airlines allowing code sharing on the Athens-New York route from October 1 in a bid to boost its global reach.

Olympic Air chief Antonis Simigdalas also said the airline would sign agreements with Air France-KLM, Cyprus Airways and Etihad Airways for flights to Canada, France and the Netherlands between now and March 2010.

Olympic Air has received investments totalling 1.1 billion dollars (746 million euros), employs 5,000 people, owns 32 planes and includes handling and engineering services.

Olympic Airlines will continue to operate flights to a few international destinations including Tel Aviv, Istanbul and Cairo and some Greek islands after a call for bids for these destinations proved unsuccessful in August.

A new Greek government to be formed after the general election next weekend is expected to relaunch bids for these remaining destinations, Olympic Airlines has said.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 7:02 am and is filed under General Airline News, Olympic Airlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.