So, last month I went to Athens for a week. It was awesome. I was hoping to score a dirt cheap fare to Athens, but it was not to be. British Airways was expensive, and so the choice was between Easyjet and Olympic Airlines/Airways (OA). OA won the day.

PRICES AND BOOKING:
Prices vary, although they do seem to be on the cheap-ish side for an international airline. My ticket each way was £44. Once you added tax on, however, it was £180 return from Heathrow to Athens. This was only 50p more expensive than Easyjet and a lot less expensive than flying BA, although I did book kind of last minute. I booked through the website, and was pleased at the rate I found on it.
The website, www.olympicairlines.com is pretty easy to navigate around. It's not as comprehensive as some, but it offered all the information I needed. You can book and pay for flights through it (Because OA is a full service airline, there are no sneaky charges for checking in bags or checking in at the airport or, you know, breathing.), check what movies will be shown, and even check-in online 24 hours before the flight, or if you've only got hand baggage.

Athens airport is nice and spacious, and check in gates were clearly marked for each flight. My flight back to England was actually delayed for 6 hours due to a techincal problem with an aircraft, luckily I checked my email the night before and was duly informed, so I just turned up to the airport 2 hours before the new departure time. There was a bit of a wait to check in, courtesy of a massive school group that consisted of far too many over-hyped ten year olds. With only two counters open for the flight, I had to wait about 20 minutes to get to the front of the line. Because the flight was delayed, OA were compensating people with…..FREE FOOD VOUCHERS! How exciting is that? (Answer: Very.) So I got €12 worth of food vouchers without the inconvenience of having to wait at the airport for 6 hours.

Because Heathrow is hell on earth, there were problems taking off from London on time. We missed our original takeoff slot by 5 minutes, and as such were pushed to the back of the queue. We were all sitting down, belted in and ready to go when the Captain announced that we would have a 90 minute wait before we could take off. To his credit, he was very apologetic and explained in detail what had happened, but there was still the fact that we had to sit on the ground for 90 minutes before we could even take off. There was nothing for it but to wait. The crew encouraged us to walk around, make phone calls if we had to, and started up the inflight entertainment. They also came around offering juice and water, so the certainly did their best. The captain gave us regular updates, and eventually we took off, after completing final safety checks.

INFLIGHT SERVICE:
Once the flight (finally) took off, I found the crew to be friendly and professional. They were all completely bilingual, and would make announcements in both Greek and English. Although, if they were saying something in Greek, and holding a pot of coffee with an enquiring look, you didn't have to really wait for them to repeat it in English. They were very good at noticing if you were and English or a Greek speaker, and remembering throughout the flight. Although both flights were quite empty, so maybe they wouldn't be so good at remembering during a packed flight. The crew seemed to be friendly, even taking to the time to chat with passengers and each other. Again, maybe if the flight had been packed they wouldn't have had the time.

PTV's (Personal TV's) are progressively being introduced to the fleet. Both times I was on an Airbus, which has been fitted out with them. There are about 5 channels showing a range of documentaries, movies and music video-type shows. All the shows were in English, with Greek subtitles. Flying out, there seemed to be something wrong with the system, as I could only get two channels, plus the airshow. It seemed to be an aircraft-wide problem, as even the safety video was jumpy in parts, and was cut off before the end. Flying back to the UK, however, all channels seemed to be working fine, even if the shows weren't particularly riveting (Watching Englebert Humperdinck in concert, anyone?) The crew hand out headphones at the beginning of the flight, and collect them before descent.

DISEMBARKATION AND LUGGAGE RETRIEVAL:
No problems here, and as both airports have aerobridges no horrible bus rides to the terminal. There was a bit of a wait at both airports to get through immigration, partly because there seemed to be a lot of non EU passengers on both flights, and they had only opened up channels for EU citizens. It was a bit of a palaver just trying to get through immigration, but that is the fault of airport authorities, not OA itself. The baggage came out reasonably promptly, but it wasn't the fastest I've ever experienced.