Greece bids to stall Olympic slide

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Olympic Airways will relaunch with a new name and a scaled-down workforce if proposals presented to the Greek parliament this week are accepted.

Olympic Airways will relaunch with a new name and a scaled-down workforce if proposals presented to the Greek parliament this week are accepted. The state-owned carrier, which has amassed debts of around Eu500,000 ($568,200) since September 2001, would be privatised, renamed Olympic Airlines and have labour costs reduced by 45% in time for next year's Athens Olympics if the vote is passed.

The government, which failed to attract bidders in two previous privatisation attempts, is hoping to sell a 51% stake in the airline after outsourcing its baggage handling and maintenance operations. Greek transport minister Christos Verelis revealed that banks were already in talks with potential bidders, and said he hoped the lower employee numbers would encourage interest.

?A bold step for the new era of Olympic has been taken,? he said, ?and the government is setting up a modern, efficient carrier.?

The future of Olympic's self-operated inflight retail service was not discussed in the proposals. The company's 45-craft fleet carried 2.69m passengers in 2002, according to The Airline Book 2003-2004, published this month by Raven Fox.