Thanks to Taildragger, who indeed put a grand tour together for me and a Mythos where his mouth was
I had a first hand experience in taking an operational look behind the scenes at Athens Venizelos.
I had the opportunity to witness the operation of the world's most advanced, fully automated, fully redundant baggage security system (I understand only one other such system is installed worldwide and that's in the US) and baggage handling system.
Tight security all round, run by proffessionals in close and surprisingly harmonious co-operation with the local police.
Airport staff doing continuous walk-arounds, pinpointing and fixing any discrepancies, or bottlenecks and generally improving on the spot what can be improved to achieve the original design standards. Very polite, too!
The CAA have been offloaded by many un-related chores that they had to put up with at the old place so they can now concentrate on their core-business.
Check-in desks smoothly operational, on a demand-assigned-multiple-access principle.
No traffic problems inside the airport, the traffic police and parking marshals are now doing a cracking job in "educating" the Greeks on how to behave
Aprons seem to function ok. Olympic Airways maintenance facilities look impressive, together with their HQ but still quite a way to go. These alone should bring OAL on a different level. The quicker OAL makes the most out of the new situation the better it will be for the company's future.
It was evident that most of the problems were -and some still are- due to the habits and outdated infrastructure that was carried over from old Ellinikon. These, quite naturally, hit the airport's largest operator. It shouldn't be long before they get it up to speed.
A lot still needs to be done to make the place look cosy and attractive and tidy up the scruffy-looking cafes around departures.
Don't you dare try to leave the airport to the south yet, which is where about 90% of the ground staff and aircrew live. You'll probably have to spend about an hour discussing social injustice and other makroeconomic theories with cute little gypsy kids, stuck in traffic around the narrow country lanes of Koropi wine-country. Wait until they finish something that resembles a road first.
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(Th)ink Rate! Don't (Th)ink! Don't (Th)ink!