Athens - Qatar Airways, Iberia and Chrysler Aviation are among 13 companies which have expressed interest in the sale of state-owned Olympic Airlines, Greece's transport minister said Thursday.

"We were presented with 13 interested companies for flight operations, 15 have expressed interest for the ground handling and 10 for the technical maintenance part," Transport Minister Kostas Hatzidakis said in a radio interview.

Greece's conservative government launched a tender in September to split the lossmaking airline into three parts and to sell each of them off.

Hatzidakis said the government hoped to complete the sale by the start of 2009. It will be the fifth effort by the government to privatize the loss making airline which has reported losses of 450 million a year.

The government said Iberia, Spain's largest airline, Qatar Airways, MyAir, a low-cost Italian airline company, Sky Europe, a low-cost airline company operating in central Europe, SkyOne, a US charter company and Fouad al-Ghanim Group, a Kuwait group in charge of Gainjet had expressed initial interest in the airline.

Five companies, including Goldair and Swissport, the company controlling ground operations in Greek airports, have expressed interest in Olympics' ground handling.

The plan to privatize the airline was approved by the European Commission which said it will agree to suspend action over illegal state subsidies if the sale is finalised. (dpa)