GREECE - ATHENS as seen through the vintage airline posters & timetables

GREECE - ATHENS as seen through the vintage airline posters & Timetables

One of the most effective ways to advertise a new destination being a city or a country was through posters. Airlines used these medium quite effectively and left us with beautiful if not idyllic versions of the country/city (ies) they were to serve

We start from Greece the ideal touristic country 

AΕRO ESPRESSO ITALIANA

The Italian aviation company advertises its routes to Istanbul via Athens and to Rhodes (then under Italian rule) . Worthnoting is that the company advertises a sea plane which could not take off from Ciampino but from Ostia the nearest port to Rome and and not land in Athens but in Piraeus.

AIR FRANCE

Stress is given to Greek civilization of the antiquity in the above poster.Poster by Georges Mathieu

 In the same vein as the precedent and by the same author Gui Georget, the eternal Greece with beaches, sun and sea

 ALITALIA

 

Alitalia  with the wing of a DC6/DC7 and the victory of Samothrace on the background ,  stressing here also the Greek heritage

AUSTRIAN AIRLINES 

Classic advertising poster from Austrian Airlines.... Amphora and Greek temple

BRITISH EUROPEAN AIRWAYS  

A classic iconography of Athens : The Acropolis is the main subject for this travel poster by british European Airways.

EL AL

The Israeli  Airline had a string of posters promoting its destinations, Athens being on the earliest European cities served .The Trojan horse is a crystal clear reference to Homer's the Illiad but somehow ill advised to figure on a poster as all we know the famous sentence " Equo ne credite, Teucri / Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes"  but the trojan horse symbolizes the cunning intelligence of the Greek people to end an endless war.

J.A.T

Lovely posters of JAT  mid-fifties probably with joint services to belgrade and beyond . Rare Eastern block posters (although Yugoslavia was a champion of the non-aligned group)

K.L.M

Where all began Sounion , Icarus and  Daedalus in this travel poster of KLM

 MIDDLE EAST AIRLINES

2 posters one in English and the other in Arabic  with a Comet in the background, an amphora  with a warrior painted , multi-colored rug (craftmanship) and citrus fruits : orange and lemon.

OLYMPIC AIRWAYS  

Olympic Airways choose to represent one of the deities of the antiquity on a cloud hitch hiking any Olympic Airways passing lane 

  
PAN AMERICAN

The designated airline to serve Greece was archeival TWA and PAM AMERICAN started to serve Greece in the eighties by providing feeding services from Athens to Frankfurt on daily B727-200 flights

SWISSAIR

SWISSAIR chose to represent 2 cliches of Greece its glorious past the Kryatides and a Greek shepherd with its traditional costume

THAI  INTERNATIONAL

Thai International Published this summer timetable as a tribute  to the 2004 Olympic games , held in Athens

smooth as silk all the way to Athens

TRANS WORLD AIRLINES

TWA  has been very prolific in making posters on Greece and Athens

With the Lockheed Constellation in the background, the first poster stress the art de vivre a la Grecque with its fisherman,  the fishing industry, the sea, the islands and their particular architecture

Other TWA posters

Leonidas and his Spartans

 The golden age of Pericles

TURK HAVA YOLLARI

The nemesis of Greece Turkey could not escape the frenzy of the poster with a Vickers Viscount in the background a woman in traditional attire , and Greek columns .