According to Psarros, all communication frequencies of the Athens–Macedonia Area Control Center, Greece’s largest control unit, responsible for the entire Athens FIR, suddenly went down at around 9 a.m.
Although airport operations on the ground continued, controllers temporarily lost the ability to communicate with aircraft already in flight. To maintain safety, controllers switched to backup and airport frequencies and, where necessary, rerouted aircraft through neighbouring FIRs.
Psarros underlined that Greece’s air-traffic equipment is outdated and has experienced similar failures before. He recalled that a comparable incident last year was traced to the absence of a critical spare part that the Civil Aviation Authority had failed to procure.
“It would not surprise me if the current problem is due to the age of the systems,” he said, adding that Greece has already faced sanctions at the European level over non-compliance with required technical standards. He called for accountability, noting that such large-scale communication failures should not be possible in a modern air-traffic system.
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