Operations at airports across Greece were put on hold for safety reasons on Sunday, the country’s civil aviation authority (HCAA) said, with the suspension partly lifted in the early afternoon
Greek state TV said unspecified issues affecting radio frequencies prompted the suspensions.
HCAA said there had been problems at the main communications center for air traffic controllers.
State broadcaster ERT said airport arrivals and departures were suspended at 9:00 a.m. local time (0700 GMT). It said flights were โbeing diverted to neighboring countries.
‘No cyberattack’
Air traffic controllers used alternative frequencies to allow some flights to take off and land in the afternoon, the president of the controllers’ association, Panagiotis Psarros, told ERTNews.
He said, however, that he could not say when services would get back to normal.
Some overflights using the Athens Flight โInformation Region (FIR) were said to be still being serviced โ during the complete suspension.
Psarros ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the problems, saying rather that “our systems are ages-old.”
Edited by: Sean Sinico