Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Greek carriers Olympic Air and Aegean Airlines to merge

by B. N. Sullivan

Olympic Air logoEarlier this week, the Greek carriers Olympic Air and Aegean Airlines announced plans to merge. Following a transition period, the merged airline will use the name and trademarks of Olympic Air, according to a statement released to the press. Olympic Handling and Olympic Engineering will become wholly owned subsidiaries of the new company. The merged company is being billed by the partners as "a national airline champion."

Under the terms of the merger agreement, the main shareholder of Aegean (Vassilakis Group) and the sole shareholder of Olympic Air (Marfin Investment Group) will have equal shares in the consolidated company. The merger must be approved by the European Union, however it is projected that the merger will be completed by late 2010 or early 2011. The new company would be listed on the Athens Stock Exchange.

Aegean Airlines and Olympic Air are Greece's two largest airlines. Aegean currently employs about 2,500 people, while Olympic Air's present work force numbers about 1,300. Another 2,000 are now employed by Olympic Handling, while Olympic engineering has 50 employees. Statements from the companies made no mention of whether any employees would be made redundant by the merger.

Aegean Airlines had planned to join the Star Alliance in June of this year. According to a Financial Times article about the merger, "analysts expect the new entity to take Aegean’s place in the grouping."
Posted by B. N. Sullivan at 10:25
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1 comments:

  1. On February 13, 2010 the Olympic Airways 327 on route Athens-Alexandria, had a problem during the landing. The plane suddenly took of again afterward it circulated over Alexandria almost 10-15 minutes. A Muslim passenger was praying. Two Egyptian children were screaming. So loudly that three stewardesses could not quite them. After landing the cabin crew refused to give any explanation to the upset passengers.

    Chiranjibi Paudyal, Facebook:
    I was also flying in the same plane. I was taking photos when the plane was about to land but it started to fly up and up. I told my Egyptian flight friend Ahmad, who was sleeping at the time, about the change of direction of the flight.
    A lady announced that "the Commander will explain" about it.

    We were scared. Ahmad started to pray alla hu akbar... some children were screaming even before this. I had thought that we were going to be killed in Alexandria, the place of Alexander the Great.

    I think after around 20 minutes, the plane landed safely. Later Ahmad told me it was better not to tell about it in advance because the people would be in panic. It was right. It is better not to know any terrible incident. We could not do anything except to be worried.

    Elisa Di Benedetto, Facebook,
    I was there... and I'm happy I'm still here now!
    ReplyDelete

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