What Caused Greece’s Airspace Shutdown? Investigation Launched Into Radio Blackout
ATHENS – Greek prosecutors began a criminal investigation on Sunday into a communications blackout that paralyzed the airspace of the country several times over the weekend, and left thousands of travelers stranded as one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
Aristidis Koreas, the director of the Athens Misdemeanor Prosecutor office, instructed the police electronic crime unit to identify whether the event is an example of dangerous interference in the transportation of the aircraft. The investigators will strive to determine the source of the interference that had occurred in almost all frequencies in the Athens Flight Information Region.
The confusion started on Saturday morning when the air traffic controllers were unable to communicate with pilots. Panagiotis Psarros, the chairman of the association of air traffic controllers in Greece, informed the state broadcasting ERT that all the frequencies simply shut down without any notice.
We could not get in touch with airplanes in the air, Psarros said.
The failure was explained by the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority through unexplained interference on the radio frequencies, stating that it was a continuous involuntary emission that interfered with normal communications. Key airlines such as the Aegean Airlines, British Airways, Ryanair and the Scandinavian Airlines were forced to cancel or divert flights during the day.
Transport and infrastructure Minister Christos Dimas claimed that the technical failure did not endanger the safety of the flights. During the outage, he said that the controllers liaised with Eurocontrol, the European air traffic management organization, to coordinate the movements of the aircraft.
Technicians of the aviation authority performed the checks of the transmission equipment throughout the facilities in the regions. Authorities also deployed aircrafts that had specialized monitoring devices to scan on the frequency spectrum and determine cause of interference.
Athens International Airport declared at about 5 p.m. Saturday that technical difficulties in the airport had been fixed and normal capacity restored.
The accident occurs as Greece continues with the multi-year project of modernizing its air navigation system, by which the upgrades are likely to be finished in 2028.
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