Olympians On The Mount
Created in Greece in 1930 under the name Icarus airlines, Olympic airlines is a lesson in state run organizations. Olympic airlines is the flagship airline for Greece and has been into and out of bankruptcy since its inception.

Before the 1960’s the names preceding the Olympic airlines name were bought and sold and bought and sold and merged and mangled and mismanaged by both private interests and the government. Due to limited interest in air travel by the residents, Olympic airlines had limited customers and was losing money precipitously.

In the 1960’s however, the company swiftly shed its skin. The government had merged the three airlines serving Greece and forth sprung one Olympic airlines. In 1960 Olympic airlines introduced their first jet liner and partnered with British carriers.

In 1965 Olympic airlines ordered its first Boeing 707 delivered the following year. At this time, Olympic began its first nonstop Kennedy (NY) to Athens run. Later in 1968 and 1969 they began routes to Africa and Canada respectively. Olympic airlines also got their first Boeing 727 jet.

In the 1970’s Olympic airlines added all sorts of bells and whistles to their airplanes and purchased a Boeing 720 and Boeing 747. However, just like Icarus flying too close to the sun, air travel was about to end air travel in Greece.

On January 22, 1973 Aristotle Onassis’ son, Alexander died in a plane crash. This sent shock waves through the Greek people. Grieved, Onassis sold all his shares of Olympic airlines back to the state, then died himself soon after that.

Olympic airlines began shutting down routes that seemed too costly yet bought more aircraft.

In the 80’s, Olympic airlines bought Cargo Bus planes and reopened routes they had closed. But people had already lost interest totally. And they hadn’t forgotten Alexander.

In 1986 strikes took hold and losses kept pouring in. Mostly due to reactionary management, their financial troubles kept mounting in the late 80’s. Olympic schemed to erase debt in order to remain afloat, but neither of these worked. Finally in 2003, the government restructured the company into separate entities which it then tried to privatize, which did not work. No one wanted to take on the 500 million euros in state aid which Olympic owed.

Olympic airlines is a tragic story of what can happen when one who knows too little about business, tries to operate a business.