Olympic Airlines: Higher, Faster, Stronger?

With the 2004 Olympic Games drawing to a close, the famous intertwined five rings will cease to be a common site, until the Winter Olympics gear up in Turin, Italy, in two years and the next Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, two years after that.

But at the airport one can still see that familiar logo, albeit with an extra ring and different colors, on jet aircraft-providing the airline using that logo flies into your local port of call.

Olympic Airways is the national airline of Greece. Olympic was formed by Aristotle Onassis on 6 April 1957 after he took over the Greek national airline T.A.E. (Technical and Aeronautical Exploitations Co. Ltd.). T.A.E. was formed in 1946.

Olympic was the first airline to have scheduled flights to five continents. That would be appropriate, as the five Olympic rings represent the "five" continents of the world (the Americas are counted as one continent; Olympic Airlines actually has six rings in its logo).

Aristotle Onassis was a Greek shipping magnate enamored with Greek history, especially the Olympic tradition. He named his ventures "Olympic." Onassis was born on 21 September 1906 in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (now known as Izmir, Turkey). At the time Smyrna had a significant Greek population as it was occupied by Greece from 1919 to 1922. In 1922 the city was recaptured by Turkey. The vast Onassis family holdings in tobacco were lost. The family moved to Greece as refugees. By 1932, Onassis had become a world-class businessman, owning commercial ships, tankers, and whalers-all bearing the Olympic name! Onassis died 15 March 1975, leaving behind the famous widow Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

After the death of Alexander Onassis, his father, Aristotle sold the company to the Greek government in 1974. On 8 December 1969 an Olympic Airways DC-6B crashed near Athens, Greece, during a storm killing 93 people. On 6 April 1997 Olympic Airways celebrated its 40th birthday.

By 2003 the Olympic Airways Group of Companies owned Olympic Airways, Olympic Aviation, and Macedonian Airlines. Olympic Aviation, founded in August 1971, ceased its operations in December 2003. The airline had a Flight Academy and bought flight simulators for ATR aircrafts. Olympic Aviation played a significant role for Olympic Airways. It served most domestic destinations of the parent company. It is one of the safest airlines in terms of crashes worldwide. However, the company has faced serious financial trouble since the 80's mainly from bad management. Olympic Airways is another example of the corruption and politically motivated management that persists in many national enterprises.

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