[7] On 6 March 2009, the Greek State announced it had reached an agreement to sell the flight operations, ground handling operations and technical base of the group to Marfin Investment Group, the largest Greek investment fund, thus ending 35 years of state ownership.

Olympic Airlines continued to operate some public service flights to Greek islands as well as some flights to destinations outside the European Union (Cairo, Alexandria, Tel Aviv, Beirut, Belgrade) until the Greek State conducted a public tender and redistributed the routes.

After just a few months Icarus went bankrupt due to financial problems and limited Greek interest in air transport.

[11] Onassis always wanted to be in the cutting edge of the technology, so in 1959 he signed a deal to buy four de Havilland Comet 4B that in 1960 was Olympic's first jet aircraft, that entered service.

[12] Olympic and British European Airways created the first codeshare flights; later the companies expanded their cooperation.

Olympic's first Boeing 707 service was also the inauguration of a non-stop route connecting Athens and New York City (JFK).

In that year they created a subsidiary airline, Olympic Aviation/Ολυμπιακή Αεροπλοΐα, to serve the Greek islands more economically and efficiently.

To further this strategy, several examples of the small twin-engined turbo-propeller Short Skyvan utility airliner were obtained for operation on routes serving smaller Greek airports.

In 1972 Olympic turned to the important Greece-Australia market, beginning Boeing 707-320 operations between Athens and Melbourne twice a week via Bangkok and Singapore.

On 23 January 1973, Aristotle Onassis' son, Alexander, died in a plane crash; the event came as a shock to the Greek people and a new phase began for Olympic Airways.

A new Olympic Airways Cargo division was created by converting the Boeing 707-320 "City of Lindos", but the plans were soon abandoned.

In 1990 a route to Tokyo via Bangkok was launched but Olympic was soon forced to shut it down, despite very high load factors (95%).

A few years later, in an attempt to make OA profitable, management was given to British Airways (Speedwing International Ltd)[citation needed].

A company formed in the ’80s called Olympic AirTours (Ολυμπιακή Τουριστική) had already been transformed into Macedonian Airlines.

In December 2004, the Greek government decided to privatize Olympic Airlines, but the sale process failed as none of the buyers was eager to repay the Greek state almost 700 million euros in state aid, which was later declared illegal by the European Commission in December 2005.

In April of that year, a short list of potential buyers was submitted that included Aegean Airlines, German LCC DBA and a Greek-American consortium called Olympic Investors.

In September 2005, the Greek government signed a non-binding agreement with Olympic Investors to buy the airline.

[16] In an interview, Olympic Investors stated that they were backed by York Capital with 6.5 billion dollars and assured that OA's workers would not lose their jobs.

By the end of the year, the offer fell through because the huge fine imposed on the airline by the European Commission had not been dealt with.

The money would be used to pay back part of the state aid declared illegal by the European Commission in December 2005.

[21] In November 2007, Irish airline Ryanair filed a suit with the European Commission, saying that they had not looked into their claims that Olympic had not paid back their debt.

On 1 December 2007 transport minister Kostas Hatzidakis announced that the entire Olympic Airways Group debts amounted to two billion euros and that the airline in its then form and size would cease existing in 2008.

[23] However, in 2008 due to lack of aircraft Olympic Airlines cancelled or merged a significant number of flights, about 6,000 according to their union (as of 26 August 2008).

Olympic Airlines officials have declared that this is not the major problem since "after all the income reduction is only 4–5 million euros compared to the initial budget plan".

[24] On 6 March 2009, Development Minister Kostis Hatzidakis announced the sale of the flight operations and the technical base companies to Marfin Investment Group (MIG).

On 28 September 2009, Olympic Airlines ceased to fly to most of their 69 destinations, maintaining flights to Tel Aviv, Beirut, Cairo and all public service obligation routes within Greece, until the Ministry for Transport and Communications redistributed the routes in late November, when Olympic Airlines entered liquidation.

[citation needed] Olympic Airlines operated the following fleet at the time of closure:[25][unreliable source?]