Miles for flights on Olympic Airways ?
 

Is it possible to get miles credit for flights on Olympic Airways in any of the "major" FF programmes?

PS. I would have posted this in the OA forum if there was one.

Olympic does not participate in any of the major FF programs. They have their own program, called "Icarus". For information on "Icarus" you can check out its homepage in English or in Greek.

Olympic is more of a "necessary evil". I, for one, wouldn't want to fly it enough to have any sort of status. This is also probably why no "alliance" has included them.

Unfortunately, to get to the wonderful Greek islands there is very little choice but to fly Olympic with their awful schedules if one is on a rather tight timeline as the hydrofoils,ferries etc. take a good portion of the day(or night)and often don't run in very windy and choppy conditions.

I was comepletely unprepared for my first flight on Olympic, was totally flabbergasted when I took a flight from Nairboi to Athens, and once in the air, everybody lit up cigarettes. (My BA plane was grounded for mechanical failures, and they had to put 300+ people on any flights they could to get them out of Kenya over the next two days.)

Do they still allow smoking on Olympic flights? That is one airline, I never want to experience again.

We gave up trying to enroll in the program - although part of the problem was ours.
Since we usually go to the greek isles about once every other year we thought it might be worthwhile to get a free flight about once every ten years or so. After all the trouble we felt it was not worth it.
We usually pay the extra 20 or so dollars to fly c from ath to the islands as this will allow you use of the lounges (pretty useful if you are just connecting at ath.) We usually fly c back from the islands as none of the island airports have lounges.
Sitting in 1C last summer I was invited onto the flight deck for the majority of the flight and the landing at Rhodes. Never received this benefit from any ff program before.

[This message has been edited by magic111 (edited 04-15-2002).]

There are alternatives to Olympic. Aegean Airlines flies to many of the islands. It is also not hard to find scheduled charter flights from major european cities directly to the islands.

Despite its (recent) bad reputation, Olympic is not that bad. I would say it is mediocre. Indeed bellow BA, LH, SR etc, but at about the same level as Alitalia or Iberia. Hmm, probably better than Alitalia actually :). In any case, if you have the choice of a better carrier, it makes sense not to fly OA.
Where I do recommend OA is for their business class between London-LHR or Paris-CDG and Athens: two (out of three) daily LHR-ATH and one (out of two) CDG-ATH flights are served with their Airbus A300 planes, which have true, international business class (2x2x2, big seats, legroom, individual TV etc), as opposed to the pseudo-business class standard in Europe nowadays.

NickyD, as of April 15, 2001, there are no OA flights where smoking is permitted any more.

Ahh, Thanks for the info. Maybe I'll try Olympic again one day...

OA business class trip report
 

A relatively rare trip report for an Olympic Airlines business class LHR-ATH flight appeared recently on airliners.net. Here is the link. (It loads rather slowly due to its many photos).

You can earn miles on Aegean with LH Miles&More. (and they are supposedly more reliable)
We are flying on A3 LCA-ATH-JMK/CHQ-ATH-LCA next month.

I flew on Olympic last year from Rome to Athens. That was a hell of a flight...I never saw the business class as I saw it on Olympic. It was 3x3 configuration (I think we were on a 737) but with the middle seat having a makeshift armrest, so that it was in effect only 2x2...so ghetto!

The airplane, in all its livery and internal setup, reminded me of older days Aeroflot (which is now, I think, better than most western airlines). Olympic was just...wow..but they did serve baklava for dessert.

Also, at check in, Olympic had a bigger mess than did the budget airlines. Folks from Iberia and some Swiss airline were helping them check in people in Rome, so that the crowds wouldn't spill over into their lines. And yeah, I think people did smoke and also clapped as the plane landed.

BTW, you can fly to Athens from London on EasyJet.

I recently asked about alternatives for a trip to JMK. This may help for other islands too. For your reference:

• Transavia - flies from AMS http://www.transavia.com/en
• Air Berlin: nonstop from various German airports http://www.airberlin.com/site/index.php?LANG=eng
• Air Europa - reportedly flew to Greek islands in the past http://www.air-europa-com/en/default.html
• Aegean - new jets; earn LH miles; use their website to avoid paper ticket delivery fees charged by Orbitz http://www.aegeanair.com
• Charters are also available. Found some from LGW at http://www.justtheflight.co.uk

During the summer, scheduled flights to Mykonos (JMK) are also offered by Eurofly, Hapagfly & Air Berlin, and LTU.

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Another summer charter operator from the U.K. to the Greek islands is:

www.firstchoice.co.uk/flights/