Ryanair slams EU over Athens delays, renews call for EU ATC reform

Published on Aug 21, 2025, 11:10 am CDT

6 min read

Ryanair has escalated its criticism of the European Commission after an air traffic control equipment failure in Athens on August 20 triggered fresh delays. The airline said 12 of its flights and over 2,000 passengers were affected at Athens International Airport, Eleftherios Venizelos (ATH), and renewed demands for EU ATC reform. Citing staffing shortages and mismanagement, Ryanair claims more than 5,000 of its flights and over 900,000 passengers have been delayed in Greece so far this year. EasyJet has also pressed for change after July's French ATC strikes snarled operations across Europe.

Key Points

Why it matters: ATC failures and staffing gaps continue to disrupt peak-season schedules across Europe.
Travel impact: Delays and cancellations ripple across networks, stranding passengers and aircraft.
What's next: Airlines want EU-level action to protect overflights and accelerate modernization.
Athens outage: August 20 failure at ATH delayed 12 Ryanair flights, affecting 2,000 plus passengers.
Strike fallout: French ATC walkouts on July 3 and 4 affected over 1 million passengers, per Eurocontrol.

Snapshot

Ryanair's latest broadside targets both Greece's air navigation services and the EU's pace on reform. The carrier says Greek ATC staffing and management issues have made the country one of Europe's worst performers for delays this year, and the August 20 failure at Athens compounded the strain. Eurocontrol data underscore a tight summer network, with high traffic, localized capacity shortfalls, and weather-driven reroutes increasing pressure. July's two-day French ATC strike alone rippled across the continent, with thousands of flights cancelled or delayed. EasyJet has echoed concerns over escalating operational and financial costs. Travelers should expect intermittent disruption, especially on routes touching busy control centers or congested airspace.

Background

European air traffic is running above 2024 levels during the peak season, but performance remains fragile. Structural staffing challenges at some area control centers, aging systems, and summer weather create repeated choke points. Eurocontrol's July briefing highlighted material contributions to staffing-related delay from both French and Greek ACCs, even as some regions improved. Against this backdrop, the French ATC strikes on July 3 and 4 forced widespread cancellations and delays across Europe, affecting over a million passengers. Airlines have long urged completion of Single European Sky-style reforms to harmonize airspace management, protect overflights during strikes, and standardize contingency planning. Ryanair's Athens-focused criticism adds heat to a debate that intensifies every summer peak.

Latest Developments

Ryanair's latest push for EU ATC reform after Athens outage

On August 20, an ATC equipment failure linked to Athens operations delayed 12 Ryanair flights, impacting more than 2,000 passengers. In a statement, Ryanair said that between January 1 and August 20, over 5,000 of its flights and more than 900,000 passengers were delayed in Greece, which it labels among Europe's worst ATC performers for delays. The airline again mocked Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as "Derlayed-Again," urging passengers to lobby for change. While the assertions reflect Ryanair's position, they land amid a summer of elevated delay minutes and tight capacity across the network. The event underscores how single-node failures, when layered onto staffing constraints, can quickly spill across schedules.

French ATC strikes magnified summer disruption

Eurocontrol's post-mortem on the July 3 and 4 strikes estimates that more than 1,000,000 passengers were affected across Europe. Each strike day saw an average of 3,713 delayed flights, roughly 10.7 percent of all flights, and about 1,422 cancellations, or 4.7 percent of scheduled services. Airlines including easyJet publicly criticized the disruption and cost, pointing to a pattern of seasonal vulnerability in French airspace that reverberates across European networks. With a large share of short-haul traffic crossing France, even brief strikes can generate multi-day knock-on delays as aircraft and crews fall out of position.

Network picture, staffing pressure, and Greece's role

Eurocontrol's July network briefing shows total ATFM delay down versus 2024, but still above target. En-route ATC capacity delays remained concentrated in a handful of ACCs, and staffing-related delays were material. Notably, French ACCs accounted for the largest share of July's ATC staffing delays, while Greek ACCs also contributed significantly. The agency continues to push pre-agreed weather and capacity scenarios to blunt convective storms and sector overloads, but sustained recruitment, sectorization changes, and technology upgrades are needed to ease chronic choke points. Athens' equipment issue illustrates the operational fragility when redundancy and staffing buffers are thin during peak periods.

Analysis

The Athens outage is a small event with a big message. Europe's summer network is flying close to the margins, so localized failures and staffing shortfalls have outsized effects. Ryanair's numbers are advocacy, but they mirror a real pattern Eurocontrol has documented for years, with chronic staffing pressure, uneven modernization, and heavy reliance on a few saturated sectors. French strikes remain the single largest shock to the system, given the share of European flows that cross French airspace. Greece, while a smaller player than France or Germany, punches above its weight in summer due to leisure demand and geography, so staffing hiccups or equipment faults can cascade quickly into island and hub operations. Airlines want the Commission to accelerate cross-border fixes, including better strike mitigation for overflights and faster deployment of common tools. Realistically, progress will be incremental, so travelers should expect periodic delays through late summer, especially on routes intersecting constrained sectors or storm-prone corridors.

Final Thoughts

This summer's pattern is clear, with high traffic, weather, and staffing gaps creating persistent delay risk. The Athens incident reinforces how thin the margin can be for carriers operating tight turnarounds. Ryanair's campaign will keep political pressure on Brussels and national ANSPs, and easyJet's financial guidance shows the costs add up fast. Until staffing improves and modernization accelerates, travelers should build slack into itineraries, especially for tight connections. The policy debate will continue into the off-season, but near-term reliability hinges on day-to-day execution in a saturated network. Expect more calls, and more scrutiny, for EU ATC reform.