Olympic Airways

Olympic Airways is the national airline of Greece.

Founded 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. After the death of Alexander Onassis his father Aristotle sold the company to the Greek government (1974).

On December 8, 1969, an Olympic Airways DC-6B crashed near Athens, Greece during a storm killing 93 people.

On April 6, 1997 Olympic Airways celebrated its 40th birthday.

By 2003, the Olympic Airways Group of Companies owned Olympic Airways, Olympic Aviation and Macedonian Airlines.

It is one of the safest (in terms of crashes) airlines worldwide. The company has faced serious financial trouble since the 80's mostly because of its bad management. In fact the management has not only been haphazard the airline was used as 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, whereas there are bright spots of excellence, Olympic was making heavy losses and running at one point flights to Tokyo, which were heavily loss making. Couple with that greek politicians and their families travelled free on the airline or for symbolic amounts. The political apointees assigned to running the company usually had no relevant background and the overly powerful unions in the company finally consigned it to the grave. The Greek government which has recently restructured the Olympic Airways Group of Companies (again), renaming the parent company Olympic Airlines and is negotiating the sale of the 51% of the company.