Aegean Airlines (A3, Athens) will not reactivate an order for five A320-200s from Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) until the Greek economy has stabilized CEO Dimitrios Gerogiannis has said. Two of the aircraft were due for delivery in 2015 with another three due the following year.
Speaking to FlightGlobal, Gerogiannis said Aegean is in talks with the European aircraft manufacturer regarding the order. “An airline cannot work to a planning horizon of a quarter or semester or even a year. So we are hoping that the situation in Greece will stabilise; then we will be able to have a better idea in two or three years,” he said.
On the status of Olympic Air (OA, Athens), which Aegean successfully acquired in late 2013 after several failed attempts, Gerogiannis said the Olympic brand would still be maintained within the Aegean Airlines Group.
“It is a brand that has value in Greece but also in some cases abroad, although Olympic withdrew from Europe some years ago. We will use the brand. We revamped the website of Olympic so it has all the functionality of the Aegean site,” he said.
He added that despite its loss-making nature, Olympic's benefit to the Aegean group came from "consolidating back-office, commercial, finance, administration and IT activities, along with IT support contracts and consolidating premises.”
“At the end of the day, what is important is the ‘costability’ of the total thing – not the individual parts. In that respect, even this year – if you consider Aegean as one group – we are profitable.”
The CEO went on to disclose that the maintenance of Olympic's brand and Air Operators Certificate were part of the conditions laid down in its October 2013 takeover. As such, Olympic continues to operate Greek Public Service Obligation routes under its own brand using its fleet of Dash 8-400s .
