Private Greek carrier Aegean Airlines has made a bid of €170 million for loss-making Greek national carrier Olympic Airlines.
Olympic has been for sale for some time, yet has valuable slots from Athens airport into London Heathrow. Aegean Airlines has a new fleet of A320 aircraft (with an average age of 2.5 years), which flies three times a day from London Stansted to Athens, with connections on throughout the Greek Islands.
Aegean Airlines was established ten years ago and has approximately 60 per cent of the Greek domestic market. The bid values Olympic at €170 million.
Aegean reported a 14 per cent rise in passenger traffic for 2008, with 6 million passengers carried on 57,635 flights, and the number of passengers per flight rising to 104 from 96 in the 2007 period. It captured a 29 per cent market share in Athens International airport.
For more information on Aegean, click here. For reviews of the economy product, click here and for business class, click here.
Aegean has scheduled flights to 17 Greek destinations (Athens, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Chania, Rhodes, Kos, Samos, Mytilene, Chios, Alexandroupolis, Mykonos, Santorini, Kavala, Limnos, Corfu, Ioannina and Kefalonia) and 13 other international destinations (London, Paris, Munich, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Stuttgart, Rome, Milan, Larnaca, Cairo, Sofia, Bucharest and Tirana).
The airline has a two-class product, and allows frequent flyers to earn and spend Miles and More points with Lufthansa’s frequent-flyer programme, as well as points from its own scheme Miles and Bonus.
For more information visit aegeanairlines.com, olympicairlines.com.
Report by Tom Otley
