Official Olympic airline
Greece’s national carrier Olympic Airways was chosen as a national sponsor for the 2004 Olympic Games yesterday, but will not be drawing upon its shaky finances. The airline is to provide 10 million euros’ worth of services in the form of airline tickets, 2 million of which may be from other airlines that fly to airports not covered by OA. The chief of the Athens 2004 organizing committee, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, who signed the agreement yesterday with OA’s managing director, Dionysis Kalofonos, said the original Games sponsorship target of 200 million euros had already been exceeded, with income so far amounting to 272.8 million. «Our new target is 300 million euros,» she said. Meanwhile, OA scaled back services to the Middle East yesterday, canceling its Dubai, Beirut, and Alexandria flights and reducing services to Cairo and Larnaca. Flights to Kuwait were canceled 10 days ago. European and domestic timetables will be adjusted according to demand. Only flights to Brussels, New York, Canada and Johannesburg are as scheduled.
