The meeting lasted one hour and 15 minutes. blackout at Fir Athens with the YPA trying to justify the unjustifiable by claiming that no issue arose flight safety in its airspace.
The serious damage, which in a serious country would already have led to heads rolling, was most likely caused by a failure in the regular maintenance of the system, according to initial indications. This is how it happened blackout on the radar at the Athens Area Control Center, which controls the airspace under its responsibility YPA.
Η damage caused the collapse of the system with air traffic controllers sitting in front of black screens at noon on Thursday, December 16, unable to see the flight paths of aircraft!
For more than an hour, until 1:12 p.m., no flights took off from Athens International Airport «Eleftherios Venizelos» or from island airports.. Only flights that were already in the air were landed, as control was carried out using the backup system, which also monitored overflights in Greek airspace.
Η Hellenic Air Traffic Controllers Association (HATCA) denounces deterioration that borders on contempt. It warns that under these circumstances and if no measures are taken, it will be impossible to provide smooth air traffic services and there will inevitably be significant delays, especially during the summer season.
«The Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority is forced to send out an urgent warning signal, highlighting the difficult situation in which the air traffic control system finds itself. Its deterioration, which is reaching the point of obsolescence, will certainly bring about a halt in the expected tourist growth of the coming years and a certain loss of revenue for our country,» they emphasize.
The PALLAS system It has already been in use for over 21 years and should normally have been replaced. Air traffic controllers have been requesting the replacement of the system for many years. It was installed in 1999 and has since been upgraded twice, most recently in 2017.
The auditors were forced to use the backup system, However, this did not provide the characteristic inclination of the aircraft, so they did not have the identity of each aircraft, only the code. As a result, its details and its identification with a specific flight had to be confirmed by contacting the pilot.
The radar PALLAS is one of the most fundamental aspects of exercise air traffic control as it is the one that receives data from flight plans and radar stations, processes it, and then displays it on the controller's screen.
The announcement by the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) also attributed the fault to maintenance work in a statement it issued, emphasizing that there were no flight safety issues. Although initial reports from the Authority indicated that the problem lasted only 40 minutes, the announcement notes that it took 1 hour and 15 minutes to restore service.
The full announcement by the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority:
«The YPA announces to passengers that due to necessary maintenance work on the power supply systems at the service's central facilities in Elliniko, there was a partial failure of one of the air traffic control systems at Athens Macedonia Area Control Center (KEPAHM), which was restored after short period of time (one hour and fifteen minutes) without raising any flight safety issues in Greek airspace.
All the planes that were at FIR Athens was in communication with air traffic controllers, so flights that were in progress continued uninterrupted.
From 1:12 p.m. onwards, air traffic returned to maximum service levels and the entire flight schedule returned to normal.
