Air Greece
Air Greece was an airline based in Heraklion, Greece. It was one of the first private airlines to operate scheduled domestic flights in Greece.
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Founded | 1994 | ||||||
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Ceased operations | 1999 | ||||||
Hubs | Heraklion International Airport | ||||||
Focus cities | Athens, Thessaloniki, Rhodes | ||||||
Fleet size | 5 | ||||||
Destinations | 12 | ||||||
Headquarters | Heraklion, Greece | ||||||
Key people | Kostas Mpantouvas (Chairman, CEO) |
History
Air Greece was established in 1994 by Cretan businessmen and started operations in the same year using two leased ATR72 turboprops on domestic routes. In April 1997 a third ATR72 was added to the fleet, followed by the lease of two Fokker 100s in May and June 1999. Delivery of the Fokkers marked the international expansion of the company and new routes to destinations in Germany were opened.
In 1999, passenger ferry company Minoan Lines acquired a 51% stake in Air Greece. However, at that time Air Greece was facing strong competition from Aegean Airlines, Cronus Airlines and Olympic Airways, forcing it to begin a cooperation with Aegean which ended in a full takeover by Aegean in December 1999. During 2000, Air Greece's original owners made an unsuccessful attempt to launch Cretan Airways as its successor.
Services
Air Greece operated scheduled services from/to the following cities:
International destinations:
- Cologne, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf.
Fleet
The fleet of Air Greece consisted of the following aircraft:
References
- "Operators by state" (PDF). icao.int. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 October 2015. Retrieved 16 April 2015.