Olympic Airways operations in Hungary flying high

Olympic Airways<.> operations in Hungary<.> are flying high with very satisfactory summer results, thanks primarily to the efforts of Janos Szamarasz, manager for OA in Hungary. Despite drawbacks, the veteran of the airlines and travel industries has managed to achieve a 78-plus percentage load for August, 1999. This represents an improvements of more than 30 percent over the previous year, for a total of some 30,000 passengers.
Rather cleverly Szamarasz books many of his passengers for destinations beyond Greece, such as connecting conveniently on Olympic flights from Athens to Sydney, Bangkok, Dubai, Tel Aviv, and Larnaca. This not only boosts traffic form Hungary, but overall revenue for the Greek flag air carrier as well.
He is working with the leading operators and agencies in Hungary, including the major tour operators such as Jorgos, Vista, and Apollon.
Szamarasz is making impressive inroads against his competitor Malev Hungarian Airlines, for which he once served as general manager in Greece. In 1998, Malev carried some 70,000 passengers to Greece, while OA had 22,000. This year Malev's traffic was static, with 70,000, while Olympic jumped 30 percent to 30,000.
The present schedule has Olympic with five flights a week between Athens and Budapest, while Malev operates ten a week between Athens and Budapest as well as ten a week between Thessaloniki and Budapest.
Szamarasz is clamoring for daily flights between Athens and Budapest, plus additoinal ones to such destinations as the island of Crete, which is very popular with Hungarians.
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