Greek flights restart after radio loss grinds airport operations to halt

Air traffic was disrupted and there was no way to communicate with aircraft over the airspace, authorities said.

Incoming and outgoing flights were temporarily suspended in airports across Greece after airspace radio frequencies were lost due to a technical problem that has confounded authorities.

Thousands of travellers were seen stranded at airports for several hours on Sunday as air traffic was crippled and communications were cut off.

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Authorities said the disruption began just before 9am local time (07:00 GMT), when most aviation radio frequencies were hit by massive interference, forcing a precautionary shutdown of Greek airspace.

Greece’s civil aviation authority said an indeterminate “noise” impacted radio channels, but the cause was not clear.

“The ‘noise’ observed in the frequencies was in the form of continuous, involuntary emission,” it said in a statement.

People gather as airports across Greece suspended arrivals and departures on Sunday at the Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport, near Athens, Greece, January 4, 2026 [Louiza Vradi/Reuters]

Panagiotis Psarros, chair of the Association of Greek Air Traffic Controllers, said all frequencies were suddenly lost, so there was no way to communicate with aircraft in the sky.

He also blamed old systems, saying the ageing infrastructure should have been replaced many years ago.

The authorities were only able to service flyovers for hours before limited services were restored by Sunday afternoon through backup frequencies. Air traffic has been resuming progressively and is now fully restored, they said.

Christos Dimas, Greece’s infrastructure and transport minister, said the incident did not compromise flight safety.

Around 45 flights were leaving Greek airports every hour by late afternoon, an official said. The press office at the country’s civil aviation authority said 31.6 million passengers transited through Athens airport in the first 11 months of 2025.

The air traffic controllers’ association said the breakdown affected all frequencies used on the ground, and some frequencies used by Athens Approach, an air traffic control unit responsible for managing aircraft flying in and out of the Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport near Athens.

Among its responsibilities are radar monitoring for safe separation of aircraft in the sky as well as issuing instructions on speed and altitude levels.

The association called the scale of Sunday’s incident “unprecedented and unacceptable”.