Olympic Airlines
Olympic Airlines is the national airline of Greece.
Olympic was founded as Olympic Airways by Aristotle Onassis on April 6, 1957 after he took over the Greek national airline T.A.E. It was the first airline to have scheduled flights to five continents. In 1974, Onassis sold the company to the Greek government, following the death of his son Alexander.
On December 8, 1969, an Olympic DC-6B crashed near Athens, Greece during a storm killing 93 people. Despite this disaster, Olympic remains one of the safest airlines worldwide in terms of crashes.
By 2003, the Olympic Airways Group of Companies owned Olympic Airways, Olympic Aviation and Macedonian Airlines.
The company has faced serious financial trouble since the 80s, mostly because of its dubious management. In fact, the management has not only been haphazard, the airline was used as an employment provider for politically connected individuals, and was severely indebted as a result. Olympic Airways is a prime example of the corruption and politically motivated management that persists in many Greek state enterprises — while there are bright spots of excellence, Olympic was recording heavy losses and running at one point flights to Tokyo, which was its most unprofitable route. Furthermore, Greek politicians and their families travelled free on the airline or for token amounts. The political appointees assigned to run the company usually had no relevant background and the overly powerful unions in the company finally consigned it to the grave. The Greek government recently restructured the Olympic Airways Group of Companies, renaming the parent company Olympic Airlines, and is negotiating the sale of the 51% of the company.
After nearly 47 years on December 12, 2003, the official name of the airline was changed from Olympic Airways to Olympic Airlines.