Having thoroughly enjoyed our wonderful three nights in Milos, it was time to head back to Athens and who better to fly with, but the cheapest option, affording me also the chance to pen this Olympic Air review; as opposed to another outing on Sky Express, who it would turn out were woefully delayed that day anyway.

After a 30-second car rental return situation out the front (more to come on that again, suffice to say the guy who rented us the car was not at all in the mood for pleasantries), we entered the austere check-in area of Milos Airport to a scene of complete meltdown.

As above, a Sky Express flight from much earlier that morning had returned to Athens due to weather, and the subsequent flights’ passengers were now showing up to check-in, adding to the frustration and confusion. For context, the check-in hall is about the size of a good living room/kitchen combined.

Meanwhile, our sole Olympic Air check-in agent had all but abandoned any attempt at crowd control and was now focusing entirely on processing the queue that wrapped around a row of seats and out to the door as quickly as possible, while batting away questions about Sky Express to the now entirely unmanned check-in desk on the other side of the lone x-ray machine.

Security, similarly, was a one x-ray, one metal detector event, and we were through to the departure hall in no time. No point looking for a lounge here, because you certainly won’t find one…

Before long, we were all lined up outdoors in a little patio area, waiting to be let loose across the airfield to our waiting craft in the distance.

If there’s one thing I’ll give the local airlines credit for, it’s their ruthless turnaround efficiency in these tiny airports – in the time it took me from taking the below picture to actually walking to the back of the plane, that luggage door was already sealed up and us passengers were the only apparent remaining cause of delay.

Sweets were hastily dispensed at the entrance to the plane, and we quickly made our way down to our allotted front row seats.

There’s no doubt that this plane seemed much newer and more ‘luxurious’ (if we can be so bold as to describe any commercial ATR42 as such) than the more spartan, vintage Sky Express plane that had brought us over.

The seats seemed relatively fresh, clean, and had a magazine in case you needed to distract yourself from the choppy coastal winds.

Before long, safety briefing given, we were hurtling down towards the end of the runway – and that was actually just to turn around and have the full length available to us – before plonking ourselves there for a moment, engines blaring, plane shaking like an angry child having a tantrum, before one of the most blink-and-miss take-offs I’ve ever sat through.

In the air, and to my sheer astonishment given our 25-minute voyage, packaged snacks and a bottle of water started to be dispensed to each passenger. Surely this has to be one of the greatest feats of Greek inter-island flying, that a single cabin crew can both hand out snacks and water, answer questions along the way, and have time to both come back around and collect all the rubbish and then check that everyone’s buckled up for landing.

I had barely managed to open my bottle of water and take a swig before final approach, and the snack bar remains on my nightstand here in Ireland, having been judged ‘too good to throw away’.

Before long, out over the sea, we made our final turn to face the runway at Athens airport and begin our final descent, punctuated by the occasional shriek of the less-experienced small plane passenger.

Overall, there’s not much to get excited about on any flight lasting under 30 minutes, but Olympic Air was definitely as upscale an experience as one could realistically expect with such a short journey.