Flight delays continue at Athens airport

Air traffic controllers look intransigent, with astir nary scope for negotiations with the Transport Ministry.

It each started past Thursday when the controllers unexpectedly decided to bounds the fig of flights they negociate astatine Athens International Airport, “restoring operations to the mean capableness limit,” arsenic they claim, by “cutting” the further flights they had served during the summer.

This caused superior disruptions to the Athens airdrome schedule, where astir 900 craft movements are presently recorded daily. According to the information available to Kathimerini, past Saturday 23% of arrivals astatine the country’s largest airdrome were affected, with 12% exceeding 31 minutes of delay. Correspondingly, 17.4% of departures experienced problems, with 1% signaling delays of much than 31 minutes.

On Sunday, 33% of arrivals and 21% of departures experienced delays. Irregularities were besides observed connected Monday, with Kathimerini understanding that astatine definite times of the time controllers managed up to 31 flights per hour, compared to 36 during the summertime season.

This way controllers explicit their strong absorption to the caller measure for the administrative transformation of the Civil Aviation Authority. They themselves qualify it arsenic a “miscarriage,” claiming that from the archetypal time of its implementation it will origin organizational paralysis successful the assemblage alternatively of improvement. However, there are besides voices that rise suspicions of fiscal considerations down the controllers’ reaction, arsenic the measure is expected to impact definite benefits of theirs.

So far, however, there is nary motion of immoderate alteration successful the situation, arsenic sources adjacent to the auditors tell Kathimerini their petition for a gathering with Transport Minister Christos Dimas, submitted three weeks ago, remains unanswered. On the different hand, the ministry seems to beryllium constricted to an perceiver role, without a wide program to woody with the crisis, while the rider nationalist suffers, flights are delayed, airlines suffer revenue, and Greece is erstwhile again being vilified, liable for a important percent of delays successful the European network. 

However, this could person been avoided had the indispensable investments been made to modernize aerial navigation systems.