An urgent investigation was launched in Greece following Sunday’s travel chaos caused by a failure in the air-traffic control system.
Major airlines, including Aegean, EasyJet, British Airways, and Ryanair, cancelled or diverted numerous flights, impacting routes to and from Athens and other Greek destinations. Several flights were diverted to alternative airports in countries including Italy, Croatia, Hungary, Albania, and Cyprus.
Athens International Airport said operations were slowly beginning to resume on Sunday, early evening. “The Hellenic Aviation Service Provider started the gradual release of some flights in accordance with air-traffic control capacity availability. Efforts for full restoration of the technical issues are continued,” the airport said.
The disruption caused widespread diversions across Europe and the Mediterranean. Flights heading for Athens were sent to Rome and Dubrovnik. Passengers bound for Thessaloniki on SAS landed instead in Budapest, while a Transavia flight from Amsterdam was diverted to Tirana, Albania. A Vilnius-to-Heraklion service heading to Crete was rerouted to Larnaca, Cyprus.
Flight chaos “unprecedented in its scale”
“The technical issue that manifested across multiple frequencies as ‘noise’—initially traced to telecommunications infrastructure—has been fully resolved,” the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority (HCAA) stated in its latest update. This followed an earlier briefing where the agency described the event as “unprecedented in its scale, geographical reach, and persistence.”
“Operational communication frequencies and landline systems were fully restored by 17:00 local time, and the relevant NOTAM has been rescinded. Airspace capacity and traffic flow returned to normal levels as of 17:45. Throughout the management of this incident, flight safety was maintained in full compliance with international standards,” the HCAA noted.
An urgent preliminary investigation has been launched by the head of the Athens Misdemeanour Prosecutor’s Office, Aristidis Koreas, which the police’s electronic crime department will conduct.
The investigation will examine whether the offence of dangerous interference with aircraft traffic was committed and how disruptions occurred across almost all frequencies of the Athens Flight Information Region (FIR).
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