About Olympic Airlines
Olympic Airlines is the state-run flag carrier of Greece, employing about 1850 people. The company headquarters is in Athens. Although the logo resembles that of the Olympic Games, the airline is technically not named after the world sporting event, but rather after the Twelve Olympians, the principal grouping of gods and goddesses in Greek mythology.
History
In 1951, the poor financial state of all three airlines led to a decision by the Greek state to merge them into one, Hellenic National Airlines T.A.E. The new airline faced serious financial problems so the government closed it down in 1955. There was no interest in buying the airline so the Hellenic State bought the company back. In July 1956 an agreement was made between the Hellenic State and Greek shipping-magnate Aristotle Onassis to sell the company. The company flew under the name T.A.E. until the end of the year and for the first few months of 1957, when, on 6 April 1957, Olympic Airways was officially born.
The new company developed rapidly. In 1960 the first jet aircraft of OA entered into service, the De Havilland Comet 4B. At the same time, Olympic and British airline BEA agreed to create the first codeshare flights. Later on, the companies expanded their cooperation. When Hellenic crews had to spend their night in London, British crews would fly the Greek Comets to BEA destinations, and the same with Greek crews and British Comets. On all BEA and OA Comets, there would be a "BEA-OLYMPIC" sign.
In 1984, two more B747-200 aircraft were purchased from Singapore Airlines, and the Canada and Australia routes were reopened. A new Olympic Airways Cargo division was created, by converting the Boeing 707-300 "City of Lindos", but the plans were soon abandoned. In 1986, the worst strikes in the history of OA occurred, and financial losses mounted.
Very soon the losses became excessive so in 2003 the government decided to restructure the Olympic Airways Group of Companies. The subsidiary, Macedonian Airlines S.A., was renamed Olympic Airlines S.A. and took over the flight operations of Olympic Airways, erasing at the same time all of the airline's debts. The remaining group companies, except for Olympic Aviation (Olympic Airways, Olympic Into-Plane Company, Olympic Fuel Company, Olympic Airways Handling and the Olympic Airways Technical Base), merged and formed a new company, called Olympic Airways - Services S.A.. In December 2004, the Hellenic Government decided to privatise Olympic Airlines, but the sale process ended in failure as none of the buyers was eager to repay the Greek State the almost 500 million euro in State aid declared illegal by the European Commission in December 2005.