The Star Alliance Board of CEO’s has accepted the candidature of the Greek company Aegean Airlines as a future member of the alliance. The official announcement was made last May 26 during a press conference in Athens.
Star Alliance CEO Jaan Albrecht declared at the event that “Aegean Airlines is yet another important addition to the Star Alliance network. Its domestic market, Greece, is of strategic importance due to its geographic location in the eastern region of the Mediterranean acting as a major access point from southeast Europe to the European Union.
Through the Aegean Airlines’ network, in the future our customers will be offered numerous destinations in Greece as well as a wider selection of intra-European routes.”
Aegean Airlines began its activities 10 years ago and currently operates with a fleet of 31 aircraft covering a total of 47 domestic and international routes and 200 flights a day. Its operations cover 23 routes in Greece and 24 international ones. In 2008, Aegean became the largest Greek airline company in terms of the number of passengers transported.
Theodore Vassilakis, chairman of Aegean Airlines stated that “becoming a member of the Star Alliance network is both an honor and a great opportunity for our company. In the near future our customers will be able to benefit from the network, privileges and advantages of the largest and most well-known airline company alliance in the world.
Continuing on with the increase of our network and further development of our services we declare our commitment to becoming a valuable contribution to this great alliance".
Through its future enrolment in Star Alliance, Aegean Airlines will gain access to many markets spread out around the world where large Greek communities are located such as in Australia, Canada, South Africa and the US. For the same reason, business passengers based in Greece will also benefit in the future from the offer of Star Alliance to its customers: the worldwide size of its extensive network, the consistency of services to all destinations and recognition of the status obtained in frequent flyer programs.
Teams at Aegean Airlines and Star Alliance will begin integration work shortly and it is estimated that this will be concluded in 12 months. When the process is finished, Star Alliance will then include a total of 26 member companies (it currently totals 21 companies and Aegean Airlines, Air India, Brussels Airlines, Continental Airlines and TAM are confirmed as future members) plus three regional airlines – Adria Airways (Slovenia), Blue 1 (Finland) and Croatia Airlines (Croatia). Together they will offer flights to more than 1,000 destinations in 176 countries served by 21,000 flights a day.
