Olympic Airlines - Never Again!
First the good news, we are home. Exhausted and both suffering from a bad cold that started two days before leaving Athens, we are really glad to be back in Canada.
Now I have to trash Olympic Airlines. If we in Canada thought Air Canada was bad, Olympic has them beat by a country mile. On the flight out on September 2nd, our departure time was 2 Pm. We actually left Toronto at 7:30 PM with no excuse, no apology given.
For the return flight, our departure time was 8:55 AM and we left Athens at 1:20PM.
Now our tickets did say confirm international departures 72 hours prior to leaving and I did try. For three days I phoned and phoned and was put on hold, wiped out my prepay cell phone card, used up a pay phone card and finally did talk to a human being on Monday afternoon. She took our names and then hung up on me. Nothing about a time change was mentioned.
The cabin crew was reasonably apologetic, all except for the Purser. He was actually rude and condescending when I asked for an upgrade to business class (which was empty) and told me that wasn't done in flight. When I mentioned to him that the woman in the seat next to me got up and went into business class never to return he became rude and asked me if he needed to explain company policy. He finally told me that the woman in question was the wife of a tour operator and therefore VIP.
Question for Olympic? Was my money not good enough for the upgrade? Did I not look blond enough, young enough, important enough? I wasn't especially asking for a freebie, I just asked if an upgrade was possible only to be rudely turned away. Olympic Airlines is a money loosing public company. Privatization has been kicked around but I hear the unions are so strong in Greece it might never happen. I guess when your that protected by your government customer service is a word that you don't really have to learn. Too bad the Greeks will always fly it just out of sentimentality.
Me personally will never fly Olympic again. There are other ways to get to Greece.
posted by Rositta @ Wednesday, October 24, 2007
5 Comments:
welcome back home Rositta :)
Welcome home, my friend! Oy - Olympic Airlines! I've seen many an aircraft of theirs on Greek Airports and have seen them handling luggage, passeners and everything, and all I have thought was - gosh, I won't ever fly with them! And you know, I'm not shocked that easily after having survived Kenyan and South American Airlines. But Olympic is... well, bad from the outside and, as I realized now, bad from every other aspect too! I'm glad you came back home safely!
Thanks Caligirl, I'm glad to be back on Canadian soil.
Dipsy, the problem with Olympic is even complaining doesn't bring you anything as long as they are protected by the government and unions. They never have to clean up their act as Air Canada did when they were privatized.
I'm sorry that issues like that had to happen... I didn't have issues on my flight (i guess i was lucky) but i will fight along with you! no person should have that sort of poor service in their life
I just might have to "eat my words" here. We are leaving again in September for Greece and thus far have not been able to find a really good alternative. I'm still looking though.
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