Aviation

A schedule of daily flights from Athens as of next March was announced last month by the low-cost airline Snowflake, a subsidiary of SAS, during a reception held at the Swedish embassy here. Presently, Snowflake flies from Athens to Copenhagen and Stockholm.

Olympic Airways is about to be molded into slimmer carrier and renamed Olympic Airlines. The launch date of the new company has not been announced but is expected to follow soon after passage of the pertinent bill now in parliament.

The Association of European Airlines has released traffic figures for the week ending September 7. While generally an improvement on the previous week, the results gave little cause for encouragement. This was especially the case since a damaging pilot strike in weeks 36-37 of 2002 depressed the baseline, causing this year’s figures to be artificially inflated.

Passengers on Athens airport shuttle buses will soon have the opportunity to watch venue and location information movies on the bus, in both Greek and English.

The airline industry turned the corner in June, according to Giovanni Bisignani, IATA`s Director General and CEO. “Although we are still well below where we were at the same time last year, travelers are returning,” he said. “We expect that traffic recovery will intensify through July and August as a result of pent-up demand and the northern hemisphere summer holiday season,” he said.

Recent Association of European Airlines traffic figures showed there was a stable growth pattern of around plus 10% for North Atlantic traffic but that inter-Europe traffic refuses to pick up its pace and instead dropped slightly.

Aegean Airlines is one company that appears to believe the worse is over for the travel industry. The private-owned Greek airline plans to extend its route network early next year to include destinations in neighboring countries such as Cyprus, Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Egypt.

When Cyprus Airways failed in its efforts to take over Olympic Airways back in 2001, it decided on a counter move and launched its own Athens-based carrier, Hellas Jet, which got off the ground on June 24. The new carrier hopes to undercut Olympic by 15 percent, says the commercial manager of the new airline, Tasos Mais.

One way or another, the government here says a permanent solution to long-lasting problems with state-owned Olympic Airways will be found and implemented before this winter rolls in. So far, according to a business plan leaked to Greek media, a new company, to be named New Olympic Airways, would take over the present airline’s shrinking domestic and international routes.

Korean Air has signed a memorandum of understanding with Airbus and Boeing respectively to purchase a total of 17 aircraft. The deal includes eight A380s from Airbus, and seven B777s, and two B747-400ERFs from Boeing.