Thousands stranded in Europe due to airspace disruption

Communications failures forced Greece to close its airspace, causing widespread flight cancellations and delays and leaving thousands of passengers stranded across Europe.

Officials are working to understand why radio communications were disrupted Sunday morning, temporarily halting arriving and departing flights.

Some departing flights have since been allowed to resume, but incoming flights are still being told to divert or return to their point of departure. Athens’ main airport was one of the worst affected, while Thessaloniki Airport was completely closed.

The length of the disruption has raised concerns that travelers will not be able to return home before the start of the work week.

“I was supposed to take a SAS flight to London via Stockholm,” a passenger at Athens International Airport told Greek broadcaster Mega TV. “Tomorrow morning I have to go to work at Newport Hospital. I won’t get there on time, I don’t know what else to say.

“Who will pay for my extra costs for this trip? We still don’t know if and when we will leave, no one has told us anything.”

Only more than 90 flights in and out of Athens Airport were affected, although some flights have since been restored.

A staff member at the airport told the BBC that 35 planes are now allowed to take off per hour, but inbound flights are still unable to take off.

Flights from Dublin, Barcelona and Paris were earlier ordered to return to their origin airports, while flights from Copenhagen and Malta were canceled entirely.

Other flights arriving in Athens are on standby, and flights to and from other Greek airports are also affected. Three flights from Crete’s Heraklion airport, including one bound for Munich, have been delayed, public broadcaster ERT reported.

According to reports, most inbound flights will be diverted to Türkiye if not canceled outright.

The disruption comes at a busy time for air travel into and out of Athens, which typically has more than 600 scheduled flights a day as people return from winter holidays.

Amid the chaos, some passengers complained about a lack of information.

One person told news site Flash: “We have no update. They told us we could leave but I don’t think that’s true. I can’t see my flight on the departure board and I should be leaving soon.”

Another passenger who was on a flight to Rhodes that turned around and returned to Athens told Reuters: “We have no information from that moment until now.”

Domestic travelers have the option of traveling home via Greece’s rail network, but this will take longer.

The issue causing the outage is believed to be related to the radio system used by air traffic controllers to communicate with aircraft in their airspace.

Panagiotis Psarros, president of the Hellenic Air Traffic Controllers Association, told ERT that all frequencies were “suddenly lost”, adding: “We are unable to communicate with aircraft in the sky.”

The broadcaster later reported that a preliminary investigation by Greek security services suggested the problem may have been caused by a faulty antenna in the Gerania Mountains near Athens.

Italy, Türkiye and Cyprus are assisting Greece in controlling the situation.