This problem came to a head about a month ago and it seems to be pretty much sorted now. Olympic and Monarch are no longer working together however, they seem to have organised alternate carriers, at least for the Rhodes routes.

Strategic is just one of the airlines they're working with (and they do offer passenger routes/charters aswell as cargo!), others include Jet2, Sky Express, Astra, Thomas Cook and Travel Service.

Departure times as far as i'm aware, are the same or similar so I don't think it's anything to worry about

They also seem to have fallen out with Thomas Cook as our flight from Bristol to Rhodes has just been changed to Strategic and flying back to Gatwick. Just an extra 140 mile drive and two weeks parking instead of a 12 minute taxi ride, damn them.

That explains why we suddenly got an email to tell us that our Crete flight had been changed, and we were now being sent to Heraklion airport, at a later time, instead of Chania. We were a bit angry at this as when we tried to get our money back Olympic took a huge chunk as they said they were taking a cancellation fee as we had been offered an alternative.

But we have booked a villa just outside Douliana, down a steep track, and OH is unwilling (and I don't blame him) to drive a strange car, in the dark, to an isolated villa, never mind having to alter all our bookings for airport parking, car hire, arrival at the villa etc, etc.

We have booked the original flight with Monarch, but this is all adding to the expense of an already expensive, never to be repeated, holiday, courtesy of my Mum who died last year. (We usually have a studio somewhere basic, we just thought we would do something special before we got too old and broke!)

Hope nothing else goes wrong, can't cope with the stress!

I know this is going (although the original post is not really Rhodes-specific as Olympic are using all sorts of different carriers to Greek Islands and have moved their Gatwick - Goa flights from Monarch to Thomson) but I just wanted to ask tosca100 what date she was due to fly to Chania.

That explains why we suddenly got an email to tell us that our Crete flight had been changed, and we were now being sent to Heraklion airport, at a later time, instead of Chania. We were a bit angry at this as when we tried to get our money back Olympic took a huge chunk as they said they were taking a cancellation fee as we had been offered an alternative.

We've booked to Chania, flying from Gatwick on 24th May 2011 with Tor Air.
The flight time has already been moved forward over 2.5 hours.

Hi, we are flying out on Tuesday 10th. As I said I have booked the original flight with Monarch because the time suits us much better. We would probably have accepted the change if it hadn't meant trying to find the villa in the dark.

Thanks Tosca.

Our package is booked with Olympic and the flight hasn't changed, we knew when we booked that it was with Tor Air into Chania.

I looked at the Gatwick departures on Tuesday morning (our flight is due out at 6am 24/5) just out of curiosity to see if the flight had gone out on time (does anybody else do that?) and the flight (OAI193) wasn't down at all.

That - and your post - made me wonder.

Of course it might be that the TOR Air flights into Chania haven't started yet.

May I also please ask when you got the email from Olympic about your changed arrival airport?

I'm just a tad concerned that Olympic are going to hit us with a change of airport at the last minute.