Greece: Aristotle the Airman

Perhaps Greek Shipowner-Financier-Oilman Aristotle Onassis, 59, has found his greatest métier. At Paris’ Orly Airport last week, he snipped a ceremonial ribbon at the boarding ramp of the blue and white Boeing 707 jet inaugurating the transatlantic service of his Olympic Airways. He even bore gifts for the 140 passengers—key rings for the men, Dior perfume and pins for the women. And the next morning, as the jet returned from New York, “Ari” the airman again formed a one-man welcoming committee. “Onassis follows the move ments of his tankers from his yacht and from his home by an occasional telex message,” says Olympic Deputy Managing Director Ioannis Georgakis, “but he follows Olympic every day. He is thrilled by it.”

Nothing thrills Onassis more than profits, and he wants to get an Aristotelian share from the rich North Atlantic airline routes. Counting Olympic, 21 scheduled airlines will be dogfighting this year for some $800 million in revenues from an expected 4,100,000 passengers. Longtime No. 1 Pan American last year had 20.3% of the traffic, but faces increasing competition from TWA (17.7%) and BOAC (12.6%). During the traffic-heavy summer months, efficient, unsubsidized carriers like Pan Am and TWA can gross $27,000 on a typical flight, earn $15,000 per trip—an operating profit of 55%. Even such heavily subsidized national airlines as Alitalia and KLM, which spend lavishly for high-rent offices and other promotion, can earn about $7,000 per flight during the summer, though slower sales in winter put some of them in the red.

Flying Cash Registers. To get his own flying cash registers into the air, Onassis has steered Olympic along a characteristic route. He bought the bankrupt line from the government in 1957, added new equipment and turned his first profit in 1963. Then, by threatening to pull out of the airline, he maneuvered the government into extending Olympic’s monopoly status in Greece until 1986, and won a tax holiday until 1969.

Last year he tried to get a government guarantee for a $30 million loan to buy Olympic’s three transatlantic 707s. That fell with the Papandreou government. Instead, Olympic got generous credits from Boeing, which figured that Onassis the shipowner was security enough for Onassis the airline owner. Still another crisis arose from a Civil Aeronautics Board rule that foreign lines serving the U.S. must be clearly owned by nationals of the same country. Onassis holds both Greek and Argentine citizenship (which he picked up while living in Argentina in the ’20s), so he deftly transferred a majority of Olympic stock to a sister, installed relatives as the line’s top officers.

Nothing Spartan. Having gone to so much trouble to get his daily flights to and from New York and Athens, Onassis was not about to offer spartan service. Besides such now routine frills as in-flight movies and nine-channel stereo, the planes feature stewardesses in Chanel-designed uniforms, dinners from Manhattan’s “21” Club. With that and a $2,000,000 advertising campaign in the U.S., Olympic hopes to win away from TWA and Israel’s El Al, its only competitors on the New York-Athens run, at least 30% of the 115,000 Americans who will fly direct to Greece during the next 12 months, boost profits from 1965’s $2,500,000 to $4,000,000.