Olympus Vs. Agean

June 1, 2009

Getting from Crete to Rome was quite a challenge! Our flight from Crete to Athens was scheduled to leave at 10:30 a.m. on Agean airlines. Our flight from Athens to London (where we connected to Rome) didn't leave until 2:30 so we figured we had plenty of time.

Our ride to the airport arrived at 8:45 a.m. And we got there at about 9:30. The airport in Crete was very small with only 2 major airlines: Olympus and Agean. I remember a few years ago a Greek airline crashed and they think that something happened to the air conditioner and everyone on the plane passed out so this was in the back of my mind all morning.

We were the first in line at the ticket counter and we saw lots of people who worked for Agean behind the counter but they didn't seem to care that we were there waiting. One guy was smoking a cigarette, others were chatting, we couldn't figure it out so we just stood there. In the meantime though, Olympus was checking people in and really seemed to be much more sophisticated than Agean. We started wishing we were flying on Olympus instead.

It didn't take long for quite a line to form behind us. After about half an hour of waiting, we all started getting kind of impatient. Then, this woman wearing an orange reflective safety vest finally opened one counter, but then a group of about 5 people walked up past the line of everyone waiting and started checking in with her. This was the final straw. Jason stormed up to the counter and said “we were here first!” and a British woman who was in the line behind us started yelling “there is a que! THERE IS A QUE!!

This flustered the woman behind the counter who told us that these people were business class. Jason said “how do you know WE aren't business class???!!” and the woman went ahead and checked us in.

We went upstairs through the short security area, and then on to our “gate”. The airport was very small. At the gate, we sat and watched Olympus board flight after flight while those of us waiting for our Agean flight just sat there watching the time tick by – and by and by and past the time that we were supposed to board the plane. I, along with a number of other people on our flight started looking around for some type of official looking person to ask about our flight, which seemed to be delayed. We could only find Olympus airline people.

It was kind of interesting sitting there though because the airport was right next to the air force base so we watched the fighter jets take off and land while we waited.This also kind of worried me though. I was really hoping the two airports communicated with each other really well. I didn't want one of those jets flying around as we left!

Finally, at around 11:30 a woman from Agean, and the same woman in the safety vest came to our “gate” and announced they would be checking tickets and passports. Yay! We all lined up and she checked and then we all went to the door expecting to get on the bus to our plane (as we had seen the Olympus airlines do time and again).

But no, we were back to waiting and waiting without any information about what was happening. By now, people were really starting to get stressed out. I overheard that some people (including the “business class” crew who thought they could jump the line) had connecting flights to catch, etc. I went and asked the woman who checked our boarding passes what was happing and she said they were refueling the plane. We were thinking this was odd since the plane was scheduled to leave over an hour ago! They are just now refueling the plane???

Finally, the woman in the safety vest came and started to unlock the door for us to go out and get on the bus to the plane, and that is when this older lady just let her have it and yelled at her for a good 2 minutes! We were all kind of glad she did this even though we knew it wasn't that woman's fault the plane was delayed.

Finally, our bus came along – and you guessed it – it was an Olympus bus! Olympus really seemed to have their act together much better than Agean!

We drove across the runway and it was actually interesting because we drove right by some Saudi Royal Air Force planes. Don't know what they were doing in Crete but that is probably the closest we'll ever get to those airplanes.

Our plane was pretty small. Only about 20 seats. They let us board both through the front and the back (something I think they should do on all airplanes) and we were off and to Athens in less than an hour.