A3: Does a slot takeover and increases frequencies at LHR and CDG

It seems that Greeks do like to share, with Aegean Airlines have brought the Olympic Airlines slots at London Heathrow and Paris Charles De Gaul Airports.

Aegean are using these slots to expand their services, opening direct services to Larnaca and Heathrow, and increasing it's Heathrow to Athens service to four times daily from two times

New services commence from March 27th.

A three-times weekly service from Paris to Thessaloniki operating during the summer, with the trunk Paris to Athens service increasing from a single flight daily to three times a day.

For Star Alliance passengers, this is a bit of a boon for those connecting in these regions, giving more feeder flights to the rest of the network, as well as soaking up the old Olympic Air traffic.

Lets hope Aegean can make these routes pay off - and hopefully avoid another Greek tragedy....

OA: Drops Routes, starts new ones, blames the EU.

Olympic Airways are in a bit of a pickle after the European Union comptetion commision denied them a merger with Aegean Airlines. Whilst Olympic and Aegean are going to appeal, the troubles are now manfesting in route cuts from:

• Brussels
• London Heathrow
• London Gatwick
• Paris
• Vienna

These Services will end on the 27th March. Instead Olympic will focus on South Eastern Europe with routes launching

From Athens:

• Alexandroupolis
• Belgrade
• Corfu

From Thessaloniki 

• Chania, 
• Heraklion, 
• Mytilene 
• Rhodes.

 Well, at least no one is being laid off or made unemployed. Yet. 

A3/OA: Meger Denied

Aegean Airlines and Olympic Airlines - both of Greece have had their request to merge blocked by the European Commision.

The orignal proposal was annouced in 2010 when Aegean was joining Star Alliance, but has now been refused on the grounds it would

(create a)"quasi-monopoly on the Greek air transport market"

and

"would have led to higher fares for four out of six million Greek and European consumers travelling on routes to and from Athens each year".

To quote:

"Together the two carriers control more than 90 per cent of the Greek domestic air transport market and the Commission's investigation showed no realistic prospects that a new airline of a sufficient size would enter the routes and restrain the merged entity's pricing. The companies offered to cede take-off and landing slots at Greek airports, but Greek airports do not suffer from the congestion observed at other European airports in previous mergers or alliances."

Fears of a monopoly on various routes include Athens and Thessaloniki, and eight island airports, namely Herakleion and Chania, (both in Crete), Rhodes, Santorini, Mytilini, Chios, Kos and Samos.

Aegean are unhappy stating an opportunity to consolidate has been lost, but will adjust and continue. Meanwhile Olympic states it will have negative effects for consumers, the country and benefit competitors outside of Greece.

Both are studying the judgement, and are considering appeals where possible.

In the light of the Greek fiscal situation, this is a blow to both of them. Aegean is hoping to push it's expansion via Star Alliance, and had hoped to benefit the extra routes. Meanwhile the current version of Olympic Air is still "growing up" after the failure of Olympic Airways (and the subsequent privatisation) and could had done with the merger to boost it's long term credentials.

Some how or other, there is still time to run with this I think....

Aegean and Olympic to Merge... huh?

Ok - this one was completely off the radar. The New Olympic Airlines and Aegean Airlines are to merge to make a "New New" Olympic Air. 

Olympic air was built out of the remains of Olympic Airways (and the sorry saga behind that). Aegan has had a health growth over the past few years.

Alas, Greece and a lot of companies in that zone have suffered badly during the recession, so a merger of equals will have the obvious effects (Sorry, I'm going to use the S word) synergies (translation - dumping of crap parts of the two businesses and saving money), and will hopefully allow the new company to survive in the current and future environments.

The merger is of course - up for EU Competition Commission Approval

So what does that mean for Aegean's entry into Star Alliance? This is very good question. Certainly a "Strengthened" Aegan is a good thing for Star, but this in turn begs another questions:

• Does Star wish to be associated with the damaged Olympic band?
• Is Star turning in an alliance of basket case airlines? (BMI, Austrian, SAS, Brussels, Air India to name a few...)

I'm not sure on either front - depending on approvals and the final decisions by Star Alliance management.  Suffice to say, there is thinking to be done in the weeks and months ahead as this progresses.