117-637: Olympic Airlines ( Greek : Ολυμπιακές Αερογραμμές , Olympiakés Aerogrammés – OA), formerly named Olympic Airways , was the flag carrier airline of Greece. The airline's head office was located in Athens . The airline operated services to 37 domestic destinations and to 32 destinations worldwide. The airline's main base was at Athens International Airport, "Eleftherios Venizelos" , with hubs at Thessaloniki International Airport, "Macedonia" , Heraklion International Airport, "Nikos Kazantzakis" and Rhodes International Airport, "Diagoras" . Olympic Airlines also owned
234-621: A Concorde landed at Athens' Hellenikon Airport to give a demonstration. On 23 January 1973, Aristotle Onassis' son, Alexander , died in a plane crash; the event came as a shock to the Greek people and a new phase began for Olympic Airways. A few months later, Onassis sold all of the OA shares to the Greek state and he died shortly afterwards (in 1975). In 1976, under state management, OA purchased eleven Boeing 737-200 jet aircraft and created Olympic Catering , which served both OA and foreign airlines. In 1977, in
351-574: A base at London Heathrow Airport . By December 2007, the airline employed about 8,500 staff. Olympic Airlines was also accredited by IATA with the IOSA ( IATA Operational Safety Audit) for their safety practices. On 6 March 2009, the Greek State announced it had reached an agreement to sell the flight operations, ground handling operations and technical base of the group to Marfin Investment Group ,
468-570: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
585-441: A business plan for an airline to replace Olympic Airlines, aiming to begin operations in autumn 2006. Under this plan, the government would be a minority shareholder of the new carrier, which would be run as a private airline. The planned re-launch date passed without anything happening, and the plan was temporarily frozen. In 2006 O.A. was thrown a lifeline when the courts ordered Greece to repay them almost 564 million euros owed to
702-509: A cost-cutting effort, OA shut down their Australia route, followed by the Canadian one in 1978, when OA also placed orders for four Airbus A300s , plus four options. In 1984, three more B747-200 aircraft were purchased from Singapore Airlines , and the Canadian and Australian routes were reopened. A new Olympic Airways Cargo division was created by converting the Boeing 707-320 "City of Lindos", but
819-481: A deal offered by Onassis's rival, Stavros Niarchos , and the project was eventually split between them. The failure was due partly to opposition from influential people within the military junta, such as Ioannis-Orlandos Rodinos, Deputy Minister of Economic Coordination, who opposed Onassis's offers in preference to Niarchos. Onassis married Athina Mary "Tina" Livanos , daughter of shipping magnate Stavros G. Livanos and Arietta Zafiraki, on 28 December 1946. Livanos
936-480: A deal with De Havilland to buy four Comet 4B jets . Onassis was also renowned for his attention to service quality, which led him to buy gold-plated utensils and candles for the dining service of the first-class section. During 1974, the last year of Onassis's involvement with the company, Olympic Airways transported 2.5 million passengers and had a work force of 7,356 persons. At the time, his ownership of Olympic Airways distinguished Onassis as one of only two men in
1053-552: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
1170-508: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
1287-531: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near
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#17328554451871404-826: A large share in an airline in Latin America and $ 4 million worth of investments in Brazil. Also, he owned companies like Olympic Maritime and Olympic Tourist; a chemical company in Persia; apartments in Paris, London, Monte Carlo, Athens, and Acapulco; a castle in South France; the Olympic Tower (a 52-storey high-rise in Manhattan); another building in Sutton Place; Olympic Airways and Air Navigation;
1521-442: A number of factors (namely, a series of strikes, shortage of passengers, fuel price increase, and a law from the new Greek government forbidding Olympic Airways to fire employees) led Onassis to terminate his contract. Following this event, Paul Ioannidis, a high-ranking director from Olympic Airways, said the following of Onassis: "Deep down, [he] did not want to relinquish Olympic Airways. He found it flattering to own an airline. It
1638-601: A private corporation. The new owners were to secure approximately 5000 of the 8500 jobs of the Group. On 28 September 2009, Olympic Airlines ceased to fly to most of their 69 destinations, maintaining flights to Tel Aviv, Beirut, Cairo and all public service obligation routes within Greece, until the Ministry for Transport and Communications redistributed the routes in late November, when Olympic Airlines entered liquidation. Existing passengers were accommodated on other airlines. Employees of
1755-624: A shipping company used for trafficking heroin. He obtained Argentine citizenship in 1929. Eventually he established his first shipping trading company in Buenos Aires, Astilleros Onassis . After gaining his first fortune in Argentina, he expanded his shipping business worldwide and relocated to New York City , United States, where he built up his shipping businesses empire while keeping offices in Buenos Aires and Athens . His legacy in Buenos Aires
1872-502: A successful shipping entrepreneur and sent his children to prestigious schools. When Aristotle graduated from the local Evangelical Greek School at the age of 16, he spoke four languages: Greek (his native language), Turkish, Spanish, and English. Smyrna was occupied by Greece (1919–1922) in the aftermath of the Allied victory in World War I , but then Smyrna was re-taken by Turkey during
1989-520: A telephone operator with the British United River Plate Telephone Company, while following studies in commerce and port-duty administration at Aduanas Argentinas . He later became an entrepreneur, creating an Argentine import-export company, going into business for himself and making a fortune importing English-Turkish tobacco to Argentina. He reportedly told Maria Callas that he made his fortune in Buenos Aires by forming
2106-491: A total of 5,977,104 passengers (3,115,521 on domestic and 2,681,583 on international flights) compared to approximately 5,500,000 passengers in 2006. It is estimated that OA earned approximately 780 million euros in 2007, 500 of which came from international flights. However, in 2008 due to lack of aircraft Olympic Airlines cancelled or merged a significant number of flights, about 6,000 according to their union (as of 26 August 2008). Olympic Airlines officials have declared that this
2223-766: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout
2340-474: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During
2457-462: Is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki ,
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#17328554451872574-407: Is not the major problem since "after all the income reduction is only 4–5 million euros compared to the initial budget plan". On 6 March 2009, Development Minister Kostis Hatzidakis announced the sale of the flight operations and the technical base companies to Marfin Investment Group (MIG). As a result, after 35 years of state control and 10 years of failed sales attempts, Olympic once again became
2691-510: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to
2808-1049: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Aristotle Onassis Aristotle Socrates Onassis ( / oʊ ˈ n æ s ɪ s / , US also /- ˈ n ɑː -/ ; Greek : Αριστοτέλης Ωνάσης , romanized : Aristotélis Onásis , pronounced [aristoˈtelis oˈnasis] ; 20 January 1906 – 15 March 1975)
2925-758: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
3042-664: The American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine , France, of respiratory failure, a complication of the myasthenia gravis from which he had suffered the last years of his life. Onassis was buried on his island of Skorpios in Greece, alongside his son, Alexander, and his sister, Artemis. Onassis's will established a charitable foundation in memory of his son, the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation , which received 45% of Onassis's estate. The remainder of his estate
3159-650: The Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from
3276-609: The Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are
3393-605: The Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of
3510-528: The Douglas DC-6 pressurized piston-engined airliners still in use on the company's Greek domestic network. In that year they created a subsidiary airline, Olympic Aviation /Ολυμπιακή Αεροπλοΐα , to serve the Greek islands more economically and efficiently. To further this strategy, several examples of the small twin-engined turbo-propeller Short Skyvan utility airliner were obtained for operation on routes serving smaller Greek airports. In 1972 Olympic turned to
3627-486: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It
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3744-559: The Greco-Turkish War (1919–22) . The Onassis family's substantial property holdings were lost, causing them to become refugees fleeing to Greece after the Great fire of Smyrna in 1922. During this period, Onassis lost three uncles, an aunt and her husband, Chrysostomos Konialidis and their daughter, who were burned to death in a church in Akhisar where 500 Christians were seeking shelter from
3861-510: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
3978-644: The Monaco Yacht Club , the Hôtel de Paris and a third of the country's acreage. Onassis's takeover of the SBM was initially welcomed by Monaco's ruler, Prince Rainier III as the country required investment, but Onassis and Rainier's relationship had deteriorated by 1962 in the wake of the boycott of Monaco by the French President, Charles de Gaulle . Onassis and Rainier had differing visions for Monaco. Onassis wished
4095-641: The Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of
4212-417: The U.S. government . He was charged with violating the citizenship provision of the shipping laws which require that all ships displaying the U.S. flag be owned by U.S. citizens . Onassis entered a guilty plea and paid $ 7 million. Between 1950 and 1956, Onassis had success whaling off the west coast of South America. His first expedition made a net profit of US$ 4.5 million. International agreements limited
4329-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in
4446-792: The 1960s, Onassis attempted to establish a large investment contract—Project Omega—with the Greek military junta , and he sold Olympic Airways , which he had founded in 1957. He was greatly affected by the death of his son, Alexander , in 1973 and died two years later. Aristotle Socrates Onassis was born in 1906 in Karataş , a suburb of the Ottoman port city of Smyrna (now İzmir , Turkey) in Anatolia to Greek parents Socrates Onassis and Penelope Dologlou. Aristotle had one sister, Artemis, and two half-sisters, Kalliroi and Merope, by his father's second marriage following Penelope's death (1912). Socrates Onassis became
4563-552: The Great Fire of Smyrna. The Asia Minor catastrophe in 1922 was devastating for the Onassis family. His father was imprisoned and his business was transferred to Turkish ownership. The rest of the family fled to Greece where they had to stay in an outdoor refugee camp. In 1923, Onassis returned to Istanbul with $ 250 in his pocket. In August of that year, he arrived in Buenos Aires , Argentina, by Nansen passport , and got his first job as
4680-618: The Greek Government and the European Commission as part of the deal to close Olympic Airlines and sell the name and assets to Olympic Air. It was initially expected that operations would end much earlier, but due to the change of government in October 2009, the public tenders for the reallocation of subsidized flights to the Greek islands and international flight rights outside the European Union were postponed. The company stayed alive until
4797-418: The Greek State conducted a public tender and redistributed the routes. On 31 December 2009, Olympic Airlines ceased all operations, as flights to Greek islands had already been allocated and were being flown by other carriers, and flights to destinations outside the European Union had been allocated to other carriers who started operating them from 1 January 2010. Until the final closure, Olympic Airlines used
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4914-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
5031-407: The Greek government signed a non-binding agreement with Olympic Investors to buy the airline. In an interview, Olympic Investors stated that they were backed by York Capital with 6.5 billion dollars and assured that OA's workers would not lose their jobs. They stated that OA should continue to operate as an integrated company and that they were not interested in buying just parts of OA. By the end of
5148-491: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
5265-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow
5382-602: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
5499-886: The Kennedy family trust, which she would lose by re-marrying. Upon Onassis's death, she would also continue to receive US$ 150,000 each year for the rest of her life. After Onassis's death, Christina settled with Jacqueline for $ 25 million in exchange for her not contesting Onassis's will. During their marriage, the Onassises inhabited six residences: her 15-room apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue in New York City, her horse farm in New Jersey, his Ave. Foch apartment in Paris (88 Avenue Foch), his house in Athens, his house on Skorpios , and his yacht Christina O . Onassis died at age 69 on 15 March 1975 at
5616-588: The King of Saudi Arabia for securing a tanker transport deal. Since the Arabian-American Oil Co. (currently, Saudi Arabian Oil Company, but still known as Aramco ) had a monopoly on Saudi oil by a concession agreement, the US government was alarmed by the tanker deal. By 1954, a specific U.S. policy for Saudi Arabia, in addition to strengthening the US "special position," was to take "all appropriate measures to bring about
5733-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
5850-592: The advanced version of the A300, the A300-600R. Due to the rising losses and debts, the government decided to formulate a restructuring program in which all debts were erased. This programme, as well as all the plans that followed, failed. A few years later, in an attempt to make OA profitable, management was given to British Airways (Speedwing International Ltd) . The result was even larger debts and rising losses. In 1999, Olympic purchased four Airbus A340-313X aircraft, to replace
5967-483: The ageing B747-200. By December 2003, the Olympic Airways Group of Companies owned Olympic Airways (Ολυμπιακή Αεροπορία), Olympic Aviation (Ολυμπιακή Αεροπλοϊα), Macedonian Airlines (Mακεδονικές Αερογραμμές), Galileo Hellas (Γαλιλλαίος Ελλάς), Olympic Fuel Company (Ολυμπιακή Εταιρεία Καυσίμων), and Olympic Into-Plane Company . Olympic Catering had been sold a few months earlier. A company formed in
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#17328554451876084-467: The airline phased out their Comet 4Bs. Under Onassis' leadership, the airline gained a reputation for lavish style. The cabin crews were attired in Pierre Cardin -designed uniforms and passengers ate with golden cutlery and listened to the stylings of a pianist in the first-class cabin. In 1971 OA purchased new NAMC YS-11 twin-turboprop aircraft to replace the ageing non-pressurized Douglas DC-3 and
6201-484: The airline's debts. The remaining group companies, except for Olympic Aviation (Olympic Airways, Olympic Into-Plane Company, Olympic Fuel Company, Olympic Airways Handling and the Olympic Airways Technical Base), merged and formed a new company, called Olympic Airways – Services S.A. . In December 2004, the Greek government decided to privatize Olympic Airlines , but the sale process failed as none of
6318-619: The airline. The money was owed to O.A. from legally subsidized routes to Greek islands and the costs of the relocation to the new airport. The money would be used to pay back part of the state aid declared illegal by the European Commission in December 2005. Olympic Airlines redesigned their website to introduce their e-ticket service, launched on 31 July 2007, in response to the surge of online booking and online check-ins. The e-ticket service introduction by Electronic Data Systems meant Olympic abolished their old "Hermes" booking system, which had served
6435-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of
6552-500: The buyers was eager to repay the Greek state almost 700 million euros in state aid, which was later declared illegal by the European Commission in December 2005. In 2005, the Greek Government looked for potential buyers to privatize OA. In April of that year, a short list of potential buyers was submitted that included Aegean Airlines , German LCC DBA and a Greek-American consortium called Olympic Investors. Shortly afterwards Aegean Airlines pulled out, followed by DBA. In September 2005,
6669-534: The cancellation" of an agreement between the Saudi government and Onassis to transport Saudi oil on his tankers and "in any case, to make the agreement ineffective". [Doc. 128] The arrangement would have ended monopoly control of Saudi Arabia's oil by American oil companies, but was forestalled by the US government. For this reason he became a target of the US government and in 1954, the FBI investigated Onassis for fraud against
6786-546: The city with his family to Greece in 1922 in the wake of the burning of Smyrna . He moved to Argentina in 1923 and established himself as a tobacco trader and later a shipping owner during the Second World War . Moving to Monaco, Onassis fought Prince Rainier III for economic control of the country through his ownership of SBM and its Monte Carlo Casino . In the mid-1950s, he sought to secure an oil shipping arrangement with Saudi Arabia and engaged in whaling expeditions. In
6903-600: The company for more than two decades. As of November 2007, the e-ticket service was available on all European and International routes, and on 19 of the airline's 37 domestic routes. On 12 September 2007, the Luxembourg-based EU court ruled that Olympic should repay an amount of money less than what the EU Commission had ordered. This amount included unpaid taxes on fuel and spare parts, as well as unpaid fees to Athens International Airport . The new amount owed by Olympic
7020-553: The country to remain a resort for an exclusive clientele, but Rainier wished to build hotels and attract a greater number of tourists. Monaco had become less attractive as a tax haven in the wake of France's actions, and Rainier urged Onassis to invest in the construction of hotels. Onassis was reluctant to invest in hotels without a guarantee from Rainier that no other competing hotel development would be permitted, but promised to build two hotels and an apartment block. Unwilling to give Onassis his guarantee, Rainier used his veto to cancel
7137-410: The deck. Among them all, just one could be considered adult. All animals that pass within the range of the harpoon are killed in cold blood." In 1954 the government of Peru claimed the Onassis fleet were whaling within 320 kilometres (200 mi) of the coast of Peru without permission and sent naval vessels to intercept them. Peruvian air force planes were also sent and dropped bombs that exploded near
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#17328554451877254-426: The distrust of air transport by Greeks, Onassis developed the "aviation days of ’57" scheme, providing short, free flights in a DC-3 to demonstrate the reliability of air travel. Onassis always wanted to be in the cutting edge of the technology, so in 1959 he signed a deal to buy four de Havilland Comet 4B that in 1960 was Olympic's first jet aircraft, that entered service. Olympic and British European Airways created
7371-449: The entire Olympic Airways Group debts amounted to two billion euros and that the airline in its then form and size would cease existing in 2008. This was deemed to be the only way for the European Commission to write off the company's debts to the Greek public sector. He stated that Athens was under more pressure to recover the money Olympic owed because of the Ryanair lawsuit. Despite all predictions, traffic for Olympic in 2007 increased to
7488-413: The entire hotel project, and publicly attacked SBM for their 'bad faith' on television, implicitly criticising Onassis. Rainier and Onassis remained at odds over the direction of the company for several years and in June 1966 Rainier approved a plan to create 600,000 new shares in SBM to be permanently held by the state, which reduced Onassis's stake from 52% to under a third. In the Supreme Court of Monaco
7605-421: The fact that they were both married. They met in 1957 during a party in Venice promoted by Elsa Maxwell . After this first encounter, Onassis commented to Spyros Skouras : "There [was] just a natural curiosity; after all, we were the most famous Greeks alive in the world." Callas and Onassis both divorced their spouses but did not marry each other, although their relationship continued for many years. Onassis
7722-677: The factory ship. Most vessels in the fleet were captured by the Peruvian vessels and taken to Payta where they were interned. The venture came to an end after the business was sold to Kyokuyo Hogei Kaisha Whaling Company, one of the biggest Japanese whaling companies, for $ 8.5 million. Norwegian authorities suspected the involvement of Hjalmar Schacht in Onassis's whaling enterprises. Schacht had previously been connected with Onassis's Saudi Arabian deals. In 1956, Greek airlines in general faced economic difficulties, whereby companies like TAE were affected by strikes and cash shortage. The Greek government decided to give this and other companies to
7839-723: The final deadline of 31 December 2009. Icarus , the first predecessor airline to Olympic, was established in 1930. After just a few months Icarus went bankrupt due to financial problems and limited Greek interest in air transport. Ε.Ε.Ε.Σ. (Ελληνική Εταιρεία Εναέριων Συγκοινωνιών, Greek Company for Air Transport) took its place. At the same time, in 1935, a second airline was created, the privately owned T.A.E. (Τεχνικαί Αεροπορικαί Εκμεταλλεύσεις, Technical and Aeronautical Exploitations). Soon after World War II, in 1947, three airlines were based in Greece: T.A.E., ΕΛΛ.Α.Σ. (Ελληνικαί Αεροπορικαί Συγκοινωνίαι, Greek Air Transport) and Α.Μ.Ε. (Αεροπορικαί Μεταφοραί Ελλάδος, Hellenic Air Transport). In 1951
7956-471: The first codeshare flights; later the companies expanded their cooperation. When Greek crews had to spend a night in London, British crews would fly the Olympic Comets to BEA destinations, and the same with Greek crews and BEA Comets. On all BEA and OA Comets, there would be a "BEA-OLYMPIC" sign. In 1962 Olympic set a record for flying a DH Comet 4B from London to Athens in just two hours and 51 minutes. In 1965 Olympic ordered Boeing 707 -320 jets; they received
8073-457: The first flight, Onassis asked his associates to design a new logo and the coloured rings were created. Onassis wanted to copy the five coloured rings of the Olympic emblem , but the International Olympic Committee claimed the rights to the emblem, so a new, six-ring logo was introduced. The first five rings stand for the five continents, while the sixth stands for Greece. Colours used were yellow, red, blue and white. The new logo for Olympic air
8190-447: The first, bearing the name "City of Athens", in 1966. Olympic's first Boeing 707 service was also the inauguration of a non-stop route connecting Athens and New York City ( JFK ). In 1968 Olympic began serving Africa, with a twice-weekly round-trip linking Athens with Nairobi and Johannesburg. The same year OA received the first of a fleet of Boeing 727 -200 jet aircraft. A new Athens-Montreal-Chicago service commenced in 1969. Also in 1969,
8307-567: The fleet operated under flags of convenience where laws and regulations are looser than those of the owners' country. More austere regulations in countries such as the United States, which afforded higher wages and safety standards, allowed access to domestic routes with higher freight rates but at far greater running expense. As was then common practice in international shipping, Onassis's fleet had mostly Panamanian and Liberian flags and sailed tax-free while operating at low cost. This and his astute business sense helped Onassis earn handsome profits in
8424-400: The following fleet at the time of closure: Olympic Airlines has previously operated the following aircraft: (note Boeing aircraft with customer code '84' were purchased as new) Olympic Airlines had the following codeshare agreements: The first logo of the airline was a white eagle, bearing a resemblance to a propeller, featuring five rings and the name Olympic . Just two years after
8541-512: The government closed it down in 1955. There were no buyers for the airline so the Greek State bought the company back. In July 1956 the Greek State reached an agreement with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis for Onassis to purchase the airline. The company flew under the T.A.E. name until the end of the year and for the first few months of 1957. On 6 April 1957, the company was renamed Olympic Airways (Ολυμπιακή Αεροπορία/Olympiaki Aeroporia). The new company developed rapidly. To allay
8658-582: The highly competitive shipping market. Onassis made large profits when the Big Oil companies like Mobil , Socony , and Texaco signed long-term contracts known as time charters at fixed prices before the stock market fell. The high profitability of the Onassis fleet has been attributed in large part to his disregard for standards that normally govern international shipping. For example, after his Liberian-registered tanker SS Arrow ran aground and spilled oil into Chedabucto Bay , Nova Scotia in 1970, still
8775-533: The important Greece-Australia market, beginning Boeing 707-320 operations between Athens and Melbourne twice a week via Bangkok and Singapore. Olympic then acquired seven Boeing 720-051B aircraft, a medium-range derivative of the Boeing 707, from Northwest Airlines . The airline also entered the wide-body era by purchasing two new Boeing 747-200s . OA even showed interest in the BAC- Aérospatiale Concorde supersonic airliner and, on 5 January 1973,
8892-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn
9009-577: The island of Skorpios ; the 325 ft (99.06 m) luxury yacht Christina O and, finally, deposit accounts and accounts in treasuries in 217 banks in the whole world. In October 1968, amidst the Greek military junta and shortly after his marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy , Onassis announced the launch of Project Omega, a $ 400 million investment program that aimed to build considerable industrial infrastructure in Greece including an oil refinery and aluminum smelter. Onassis had cultivated Greek junta dictator Georgios Papadopoulos , for his assistance with
9126-437: The largest Greek investment fund, thus ending 35 years of state ownership. On 29 September 2009, Olympic Airlines ceased all operations and most flights. Olympic Air , the new airline formed from privatization, commenced flights. Olympic Airlines continued to operate some public service flights to Greek islands as well as some flights to destinations outside the European Union (Cairo, Alexandria, Tel Aviv, Beirut, Belgrade) until
9243-463: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
9360-564: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek
9477-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and
9594-681: The most significant oil spill off Canada's East Coast (about 25% of the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989), there was a Commission of Inquiry . Led by Patrick McTaggart-Cowan , executive director of the Science Council of Canada , the Commission found that the Arrow had been operating with almost none of its navigation equipment serviceable: " radar had ceased to function an hour before
9711-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks
9828-420: The number, size and dates between which whales could be taken. The Onassis factory ship and its attendant catcher ships paid little attention to these restrictions. The Norwegian Whaling Gazette made accusations based on sailors' testimonials, such as one given by Bruno Schalaghecke, who worked on the factory ship Olympic Challenger : "Pieces of fresh meat from the 124 whales we killed yesterday still remains on
9945-678: The old company who were in destinations no longer served may have been affected. The last Olympic Airlines flight was flight 424 from Toronto via Montreal, landing at 11:10 on 29 September 2009 at the Athens International Airport . Olympic Air took over the rest of the operations on 29 September 2009 and their first flight was on 1 October 2009 at 06:20 leaving the Athens International Airport and heading to Thessaloniki Makedonia Airport . Before their demise in 2009, Olympic Airlines flew to 37 domestic and 32 international destinations throughout 23 countries. Olympic Airlines operated
10062-834: The old-money Greek traditionalists who held Onassis in very low esteem. The couple had been living separately by the mid-1950s, with the beginning of the end of the marriage, according to Onassis' biographer, Peter Evens, coming after Livanos found Onassis in bed with a friend of hers at their home in Cap d'Antibes , the Château de la Croë . The house was then acquired by Onassis's brother-in-law and business rival Stavros Niarchos , who bought it for his wife, Eugenia Livanos , Athina's sister. Onassis and Livanos divorced in June 1960 during Onassis's well publicised affair with Maria Callas. Onassis and legendary opera soprano Maria Callas carried on an affair despite
10179-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
10296-419: The plans were soon abandoned. In 1986, there were strikes at OA, and financial losses mounted. The company faced serious financial trouble from the 1980s on, mostly because of management problems. Greek politicians and their families travelled for free or token amounts on the airline. Successive Greek governments also made Olympic carry the press at a 97 percent discount. Olympic AirTours (Ολυμπιακή Τουριστική)
10413-494: The poor financial state of the three airlines led to a decision by the Greek state to merge them into a single operator, TAE Greek National Airlines (TAE). The new airline operated a fleet of twin-engine Douglas DC-3 airliners on domestic Greek routes until the last example was disposed of in May 1970. A four-engine Douglas DC-4 was acquired in 1950 and this was operated on a route to London . The new airline faced financial problems so
10530-588: The predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation
10647-500: The private sector, and, on 30 July 1956, Onassis signed a contract granting him the operational rights to the Greek air transport industry. When Onassis heard during the negotiations that he would not be able to use the five Olympic rings in his logo due to copyright issues, he simply decided to add a sixth ring. Operation effectively started in 1957, with one DC-4, two DC-6s and 13 DC-3s. The following year saw 244,000 passengers transported. The agreement lasted until 10 December 1974, when
10764-473: The scheme, loaning Papadopoulos the use of his villa and buying dresses for his wife. The project was financially supported by the American bank First National City, and Onassis's American financial supporters eventually tired of the unfavourable terms demanded by him. The project was heavily criticized by people such as Helen Vlachos , a journalist from Athens. Another Greek Colonel, Nikolaos Makarezos , preferred
10881-542: The share creation was challenged by Onassis who claimed that it was unconstitutional, but the court found against him in March 1967. Following the ruling Onassis sold his holdings in SBM to the state of Monaco and left the country. According to Frank Brady in Onassis: An Extravagant Life , Onassis's words about the issue were: "We were gypped ." During the oil boom of the 1950s Onassis was in final discussions with
10998-591: The shares of Monaco's Société des bains de mer de Monaco (SBM) via the use of front companies in the tax haven of Panama, and took control of the organisation in the summer of that year. Onassis moved his headquarters into the Old Sporting Club on Monaco's Avenue d'Ostende shortly after taking control of the SBM. The SBM was a significant owner of property in Monaco: its assets included the Monte Carlo Casino ,
11115-512: The ship struck; the echo sounder had not been in working condition for two months; and the gyrocompass ... had a permanent error of three degrees west. The officer on watch at the time of the accident, the ship's third officer, "had no license" and none of the crew had any navigational skill except the master, "and there are even doubts about his ability." Onassis arrived in the Mediterranean principality of Monaco in 1953 and began to purchase
11232-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
11349-450: The temporary code OP for their flights (instead of OA, which is used by their successor, Olympic Air). All Olympic Airlines flights (using the OP code) since 29 September 2009 and until the final deadline of 31 December 2009, were operated by Olympic Air on a wet lease basis. The 31 December 2009 deadline as the final possible date that Olympic Airlines should cease operations, was agreed between
11466-447: The various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than
11583-529: The vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between
11700-628: The world to own a private airline, the other being Howard Hughes of TWA . Onassis was involved in the privatization of the Greek national airline and founded the privatized Olympic Airways (today Olympic Air ) in 1957. Stocks accounted for one-third of his capital, held in oil companies in the United States, the Middle East, and Venezuela. He also owned additional shares that secured his control of 95 multinational businesses in five continents. He owned gold-processing plants in Argentina and Uruguay and
11817-414: The year, the offer fell through because the huge fine imposed on the airline by the European Commission had not been dealt with. According to Greek media, the government planned to relaunch the company in late 2006. The code name for the project was Pantheon Airways. In June 2006, Greek media reported that Sabre Aviation Consulting Services was contracted by the Greek government to find investors and develop
11934-403: The ’80s called Olympic AirTours (Ολυμπιακή Τουριστική) had already been transformed into Macedonian Airlines. Very soon the losses became excessive, so in 2003, the government restructured the Olympic Airways Group of Companies. The subsidiary, Macedonian Airlines S.A. , was renamed Olympic Airlines S.A. and took over the flight operations of Olympic Airways, erasing at the same time all of
12051-459: Was 17 at the time of their marriage; Onassis was 40. Onassis and Livanos had two children, both born in New York City: a son, Alexander (1948–1973), and a daughter, Christina (1950–1988). Onassis named his legendary super-yacht after his daughter. To Onassis his marriage to Athina was more than the fulfillment of his ambitions. He also felt that the marriage dealt a blow to his father-in-law and
12168-504: Was a Greek and Argentine business magnate . He amassed the world's largest privately-owned shipping fleet and was one of the world's richest and most famous men. He was married to Athina Mary Livanos , had a long-standing affair with opera singer Maria Callas , and was married to American former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy . Onassis was born in Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire and fled
12285-568: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
12402-470: Was a friend of Jacqueline Kennedy , widow of U.S. President John F. Kennedy . They married on 20 October 1968 on Onassis's private Greek island, Skorpios . Before the marriage, an agreement was reached between Onassis and Ted Kennedy , Jacqueline's former brother-in-law. Jacqueline would receive US$ 3 million, plus US$ 1 million for each of her two children, to compensate for the US$ 150,000 she then received from
12519-549: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of
12636-546: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
12753-416: Was created as a subsidiary of OA, which issued tickets not only for OA, but for other airlines as well. Very soon, Olympic AirTours was renamed Macedonian Airlines and reestablished as a charter flight company. In 1990 a route to Tokyo via Bangkok was launched but Olympic was soon forced to shut it down, despite very high load factors (95%). Olympic purchased seven Boeing 737-400 aircraft in 1991, as well as
12870-434: Was left to his daughter, Christina. Christina's share has since passed to her only child, Athina , at the time making Athina one of the wealthiest women in the world. Jacqueline Onassis also received her share of the estate, settling for a reported $ 10 million ($ 26 million according to other sources), which was negotiated by her brother-in-law Ted Kennedy . This amount would reportedly grow to several hundred million under
12987-516: Was selected from among three proposals by an online vote which was open until 5 July 2009 on oalogo.gr . All proposals were expected to keep the six circles and to modernize the existing logo. The logo that was finally selected is a bevel version of the existing logo and font, with the exception that green has replaced the light blue on some circles. Green along with blue is one of MIG's corporate colours (as seen on Marfin Egnatia bank's logo for example) and
13104-414: Was something in which he took deep pride. It was his accomplishment. He was married to the sea, but Olympic was his mistress. We used to say that he would spend all the money he made at sea with his mistress in the sky." Onassis's time at the head of Olympic Airways is known as a golden era, due to investments he made in training and the acquisition of cutting-edge technology. For example, in 1959, he signed
13221-528: Was the creation of a shipping empire and a Hellenic Culture Fund providing youth scholarships and an academic international exchange program between Argentina , Greece , Monaco and the United States ; the programs are funded and administered by the Onassis Foundation and were eventually under the managing direction of his daughter Christina Onassis . Onassis built up a fleet of freighters and tankers that eventually exceeded seventy vessels. Most of
13338-544: Was thus also used per the request of MIG on the new uniforms too. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of
13455-566: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
13572-653: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
13689-532: Was €130 million, as compared with the original €160 million. On that same day, Olympic Investors, the Greek-American consortium that was interested in buying Olympic in 2005, stated renewed interest in buying the airline. In November 2007, Irish airline Ryanair filed a suit with the European Commission, saying that they had not looked into their claims that Olympic had not paid back their debt. On 1 December 2007 transport minister Kostas Hatzidakis announced that
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