A new airline dubbed “Athens Spirit” hopes to take on powerful and profitable Aegean Airlines in Greece. My initial response: good luck. Wait till you hear the details…
The airline wants to offer low-cost service within Greece and to limited international destinations using a fleet of two Airbus A340 aircraft and four Airbus A319. Yes, that’s right, while Aegean is acquiring highly-efficient Airbus A320neos, Athens Spirit will use gas-guzzling four engine A340s. Now that makes a lot of sense.
The airline was founded last in 2017 but only recently applied for an operating certificate from the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority. While the airline hopes to launch flights in April this year, no routes have been announced and the carrier does not have a website.
The managing director of the new airline is Dimitris Vasilios Dorizas, who spent 16 years at ill-fated Olympic Airways. Dorizas also was involved in another airline start-up, Sky Greece Airlines, which folded after less than one year in business. Sky Greece had only a single 767 and operated between Toronto and Athens.
A Slim Chance Of Success
With Olympic Airways bust, its a unipolar world in Greek aviation and Aegean Airlines is simply dominating. The Greek flag carrier boasts:
- 153 destinations
- 15 million passengers per year
- 60 million euros profit (after tax)
- Young, modern fleet
- Star Alliance membership
More importantly, it enjoys the backing of the Greek state. It’s not that there is no room for competition. But the competition better be efficient.
CONCLUSION
My title makes reference to Spirit Airlines in the USA. In order to compete with an effective low-cost model, a low cost structure is needed. I’m not sure how that is possible in the case of “Athens Spirit” and don’t predict the airline will ever take off, let alone in April.
Do you think there is room in the Greek aviation market for Athens Spirit?
Why do ULCC keep trying with wide-bodies. The A340 is a bad idea on top of using wide-bodies. Most successful ULCC have narrow-bodies only and a consistent fleet. Maybe they need they need to talk with IndiGo partners for advice.
Dear Mathew,
I am a Greek fan of your blog. The former Airline that Mr. Dorizas led went bust. Their new fleet is obsolete. It’s not fuel efficient.
But if they target the Greek immigrants living in South Africa and Canada for starters, they might succeed.
Then target Australia in the future, where there is a heavy competition from the ME3. Reminder over 700000 Greek Origin immgrants leave down under.
Otherwise the new airline will have the same fate as their first venture.
I am not optimistic about their future.
Excellent commentary. Thanks for reading and for weighing in, Greg!
Of European airlines, Aegean is probably the best by a significant margin. They are not the biggest, not the cheapest but what they do offer is excellent value for money on the routes they serve which are increasing steadily with time. For example from London to Athens they offer a better service than BA in business class with four inches more seat pitch, a wider seat, excellent food and drinks and consistently excellent service from their crews. In economy they still offer things like a hot meal v.s. BA’s buy on board and the seats are of a better standard though at the very back the pitch is the same (and that’s the same as BA offer in business class).
On all their routes they stand up well to the competition and have a winning formula which hopefully management will not start to play around with because then they will become like every other mediocre European airline.
Aegean is NOT owned by the Greek government. The EU mandated that their governments get out of the airline business. Otherwise, Olympic would still exist, as a major carrier.
By the way, Olympic still just exists, but operating mainly small turboprop planes to domestic destinations.
To make a long story short, the combination of a bad track record(founders were not only from the failed Sky Greece, but also another failed airline, Hellenic Imperial)…..plus not really having much of a business plan, Athens Spirit is destined to fail.