Olympic Airways for Strike and Delay

Following up global travel news of the past few months one could easily conclude most airlines have a rough sledding trying to maintain their level of operations. The same stands for the Greek national carrier Olympic Airways that goes through troublesome times. OA's regional pilots operating turboprop aircrafts, taking advantage of the upcoming summer period have already caused a big headache to the company’s board and of course passengers.

The past 2 weeks there have been dozens of flight cancelations and even more mergers, which have caused a chaotic scene and tremendous stress. Staff actually implements new mischievous ways of cancelling flights other than the plain old going-on-a-strike-whenever-I-feel-like technique Greeks are so font of. Olympic Airways have already declared the behaviour as on a "blackmail basis" and defend their corporate strategy by presenting numbers showing operations been intact although the carrier operates with 3 aircrafts less than 2007.

Today's scenery with 12 flight cancelations, 2 mergers 5 with huge delays reflects the company's continuous instability started in the beginning of the year when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) judged illegal, cash contributions of 500 million injected to the carrier from the Greek state in 2002-2004. On top of everything else Olympic Airway's revenue has actually decreased on the first two business quarters of 2008 although passenger numbers were increased and the company seems to be fighting a loosing battle with their rivals Aegean Airlines.

Is Olympic Airways following Alitalia’s path of corporate plunge?