Greece’s Olympic Air takes first ATR72-600

Olympic Air (OA, Athens Int’l) took delivery of its first ATR72-600 on December 1 as it moves ahead with plans to replace all of its DHC-8-Q400s.

SX-OBJ (msn 1325), a 5.6-year-old aircraft formerly operated by the now-defunct Stobart Air, was ferried to Athens Int’l from Ljubljana and currently remains parked at the Greek gateway. It is owned by GECAS and managed by AerCap, the ch-aviation fleets advanced module shows.

Olympic Air – a subsidiary of Aegean Airlines (A3, Athens Int’l) – currently operates four ATR42-600s, two DHC-8-100s, and eight DHC-8-Q400s. It only plans to replace the De Havilland Aircraft of Canada turboprops with the incoming ATR72s. Its preliminary schedules filed in October 2021 indicated that the airline would add at least six ATR72-600s by March 27, 2021. Since then, Aegean Airlines has confirmed it has secured three units of the type, formerly operated by Virgin Australia Regional, on lease from Avation and which will also be operated by Olympic Air. Its more recent schedule updates suggest that the type will be deployed into revenue service much earlier than March 2022 – Olympic Air filed schedules for ATR72-operated services from Athens Int’l to Chios, Ikaria, Mykonos, Mytilene, and Paros starting by the end of this month.

The airline did not respond to ch-aviation’s request for details concerning the number and identity of other ATR72-600s it will be adding.

Olympic Air currently operates all of its turboprops under its own code in addition to flying between Skopje and Athens on behalf of Aegean.