page_title: Olympic Air
section_title: Pantheon proposal
hierarchical_section_title: Olympic Air / History / Pantheon proposal
caption_attribution_description: English: Olympic Air Airbus A320-200 (SX-OAU) lands at London Heathrow Airport, England.
context_page_description: Olympic Air S.A. is a regional airline, a subsidiary of the Greek carrier Aegean Airlines. It was formed as part of the privatization of the former Greek national carrier Olympic Airlines, a company that carried the name Olympic Airways from 1957 to the beginning of the 21st century. Olympic Air commenced limited operations on 29 September 2009, after Olympic Airlines ceased all operations The full-scale opening of the company taking place two days later on 1 October 2009. Its main hubs are Thessaloniki International Airport and Athens International Airport. Rhodes International Airport serves as a small secondary hub. The airline's headquarters are in Building 57 at Athens International Airport in Spata, and its registered seat is in Koropi, Kropia, East Attica.
  The airline uses the IATA code OA that it inherited from Olympic Airlines, and the ICAO code OAL. The airline was launched using the ICAO code NOA, but has been reported to have bought the OAL code used by Olympic Airlines.
  On 22 February 2010, Olympic Air and its main competitor Aegean Airlines announced they had reached an agreement to merge their operations, phasing out the Olympic brand.
context_section_description: On 16 September 2008, the Greek Government announced a major restructuring of Olympic Airlines, using the "Pantheon Airways" plan to relaunch Olympic as a private airline. Pantheon would operate parallel to Olympic Airlines until April 2009, when Olympic Airlines would be shut down and Pantheon would take over most of its routes. Pantheon would then be renamed using the "Olympic" brand name and its six-rings logo. The new Olympic Air would not be a legal successor to Olympic Airlines or Airways, taking up none of the former employees or assets directly.
  In February 2009, an international tender concerning the sale of the three companies and the assets of the Olympic Airlines Group (Flight Operations, Technical Base, Ground Handling Operations) and Pantheon Airways collapsed, as the offers presented by the candidates were deemed not satisfactory by the government. After the collapse of this attempt to sell the company, former Transport Minister Kostis Hatzidakis extended an invitation to financial groups to proceed to direct negotiations for the sale of the Group. First to respond was the Marfin Investment Group (MIG), the largest investment fund of Greece, submitting an offer to buy the flight operations and technical base of the Group. Also, Swissport submitted an offer to buy the ground handling operations. After three weeks of negotiations with MIG, on 4 March 2009, Aegean Airlines and Greek-American consortium Chrysler Aviation, also submitted offers to buy the Group. However, Aegean Airlines' offer was not accepted as the new airline would control over 95% of domestic routes, while the government's financial advisors could not determine whether Chrysler Aviation was in the financial position to support its bid.
caption: Airbus A320-200 landing at London Heathrow Airport in 2010.
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