Aegean Airlines becomes member of Star Alliance

Aegean Airlines S.A. is the largest Greek airline, by fleet size and the total number of passengers carried. It operates scheduled and charter services from Athens and Thessaloniki to other major Greek destinations as well as to a number of European destinations. Its main base is Athens International Airport in Athens, with a secondary hub at Thessaloniki International Airport, "Macedonia". It has its head office in Kifisia, Athens Prefecture.

In 2008, it carried 5,978,083 passengers surpassing for the first time the rival Olympic Airlines, which carried 5,265,729 passengers. In 2009 Aegean Airlines carried 6,600,000 passengers.

Aegean Airlines was founded as Aegean Aviation in 1987. It was originally a VIP/business air operation specializing in executive and air ambulance services. On 17 February 1992, it became the first airline to be issued with a Greek independent air operator's licence. After it was bought by Vasilakis Group in 1994, Aegean Aviation commenced VIP flights from Athens all over the world with wholly owned Learjet aircraft. The Aegean Airlines name was adopted with the start of scheduled passenger services at the end of May 1999.

Aegean's first commercial flights were from Athens to Heraklion, Crete and Thessaloniki, Macedonia, with 2 brand new wholly-owned BAe 146/RJ100. Also in 1999 Aegean bought Air Greece. After an agreement in March 2001 to merge Aegean and Cronus Airlines, the company operated for a while as Aegean Cronus Airlines until full integration. Since 2005, the airline has been in partnership with Lufthansa, offering participation in the Miles & More program, and its flights, in addition to its A3 code also have the Lufthansa LH code. In March 2006, Aegean Airlines also entered into a co-operation agreement with TAP Portugal. In December 2008, Aegean Airlines announced its co-operation with Brussels Airlines.

In 2009, Aegean Airlines started codeshare agreements with; bmi, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa and TAP Portugal. The airline is owned by Laskaridis Group (25.3%), Vassilakis Group (45.2%), B Konstantakopoulos (8.3%), D Ioannou (8.1%), G David (6.3%) and Piraeus Bank (5.9%) and has 2,300 employees (2009).

On 26 May 2009, Aegean Airlines' membership application was approved by the Chief Executive Board of Star Alliance. Aegean officially joined the alliance on 30 June 2010.

The Star Alliance is the world's first and largest airline alliance. Founded in 1997, its name and emblem represent the five founding airlines, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines System, Thai Airways International and United Airlines. Star Alliance has since grown considerably and now has 27 member airlines. Three more airlines are expected to become members in 2010. Star Alliance is headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

The CEO of the alliance since 2001 is Jaan Albrecht, who began his aviation career in 1973 as a pilot for Mexicana Airlines. In 2010, he was named the winner of the Tony Jannus Award for distinguished leadership in the field of commercial aviation.

Codeshare flights between these airlines are, for the most part, seamless. This tight cooperation led to suspicions of anti-competitive behaviour, and the alliance was investigated by the European Union as a virtual merger of its members. Indeed, some speculated that if government regulations were relaxed, the members would merge into a single corporation, although no evidence has yet materialized. Prior to Star Alliance, Northwest Airlines and KLM were operating together as the forerunners of the modern airline alliance system since 1993, although there had been even earlier pairings and groupings of airlines for decades on a less formal level. The creation of Star Alliance was a milestone in airline history because of its size. It sparked the formation of rivals, notably SkyTeam and Oneworld. The alliance developed the "Regional" concept in 2004, which helped Star Alliance penetrate individual markets with the regional participation of smaller carriers. Regional Star Alliance members had to be sponsored by an existing full Star Alliance member. However, Star Alliance has stopped designating airlines as "Regional" members and now refers to all the 27 airlines as just "members".

Star Alliance members now fly 21,056 daily flights to more than 1,077 airports in 181 countries with a fleet of 4,022 aircraft. Its members carried a total of 623.53 million passengers with a turnover of US$153.51 billion. The alliance's market share is 28% of the global market based on revenue passenger kilometers (RPK), which is greater than the combined market share of all airlines that are not in any of the three major alliances. All Star Alliance carriers combined employ over 458,817 pilots, flight attendants, and other staff. Star Alliance was voted best airline alliance in the Skytrax 2007 World Airline Awards