(Files) Passengers wait at the Thessaloniki Airport "Makedonia" amidst disruption in flights linked to a technical problem at the Athens Flight Information Region (FIR), in Thessaloniki, on January 4, 2026. (Photo by Sakis Mitrolidis / AFP)
Athens: Greece's transport ministry said Wednesday that its civil aviation chief had quit over the embarrassing January 4 airspace blackout that snarled flights for hours.
"The governor of the Civil Aviation Authority (YPA), George Saounatsos, submitted his resignation to the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Christos Dimas," the ministry said in a statement.
The move came hours after an official report into the incident blamed the glitch on "obsolete technology" at Athens International Airport, one of the world's top travel destinations.
According to YPA, the malfunction began at 8:59 am (0659 GMT) on January 4 when multiple radio frequencies serving Athens airspace were hit by continuous "noise" interference.
The agency's transmitters began sending out "involuntary signal emissions", YPA said.
Hundreds of flights had to be diverted to neighbouring countries, with thousands of travellers hit. YPA said at the time that the problem was "unprecedented".
A vice president of Greece's air traffic controllers' association, Olga Toki, called the incident "very troubling" on Wednesday, saying there was "no time to waste" in upgrading the necessary systems.
"Imagine seeing planes moving on the screen and being unable to speak, intervene and issue the necessary commands," she said.
Officials have insisted that Athens airspace was quickly cleared of traffic, and that flight safety was not compromised.
The system returned to full operation at 5:00 pm, with flights restored 45 minutes later, YPA said.
No signs of a cyberattack or intentional sabotage were detected, it added.
'Outdated' systems
The investigation report, released late Tuesday, said the system was restored "following resynchronisation/restarts that took place after rerouting traffic on the backbone network".
An infrastructure overhaul costing 300 million euros ($350 million) is currently underway, which includes digital transmitters that will be delivered this year.
But Toki told state broadcaster ERT that integrating the new systems would require "no less than three years".
The Athens airport tower radar dates from 1999, air traffic controllers noted.
Greece's junior transport minister admitted last week that the airport's communications systems should have been upgraded "decades" earlier.
"These are systems we know are outdated," Konstantinos Kyranakis told Action24 TV.
Last month the European Commission referred Greece to the EU Court of Justice for failing to put in place measures to design and publish performance-based navigation (PBN) procedures at Greek airports that should have been in place five years ago.
Athens International Airport handled nearly 34 million passengers last year, an increase of 6.7 percent over the previous year.
