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For a few tense hours on Sunday ‌morning, Greek skies turned into a communications black hole. Air traffic controllers for ‌Athens airport were guiding planes towards ‍the runway when the usual radio chatter suddenly vanished - replaced by a piercing whistle.It quickly became clear that ⁠controllers had lost contact with most aircraft in ⁠Greek airspace, including dozens of incoming flights, according to two controllers and an aviation official on ‍duty at the time.Internet systems also appeared to fail across the board. Even the civil aviation authority's press office resorted to reading statements over the phone rather than sending by email.The outage, which lasted several hours and affected most of Greece's airports, stranded thousands of travellers. Authorities have ruled out a cyberattack, but the cause remains unknown - and officials admit the systems didn't get fixed, they simply came back on their own."Suddenly communications ‌went down. You could only hear a high-pitched whistle," said one controller, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The thing is, we don't know what caused it and how it ended. We want to find out ‍the exact cause to ensure once ⁠and for all that ‌this will not happen again."Controllers managed to identify a couple of working radio frequencies in the tower, but not enough to maintain safe communication with pilots, a senior official said. Within half an hour, Greece took the unprecedented step of suspending flights into and across its airspace.Air traffic controllers from across the region stepped in to help. A controller in a neighbouring country said most communication with Greece was done over the telephone because the usual radios were down."We had a black hole in Greek airspace," said aviation safety expert Faithon Karaiosifidis. "Imagine if it had happened in the summer at the peak of the tourist season. The chaos."The incident ​has reignited calls to upgrade Greece's aviation ‌infrastructure, which unions and experts say is outdated and underfunded after the country's 2009-2018 debt crisis.The government insisted on Monday that modernisation is underway ⁠and that current systems meet ‍EU standards. The plan, which includes updating communication systems, is due for completion in 2028.But last month, the European Commission referred Greece to the EU Court of Justice for failing to implement certain navigation procedures designed to boost safety in low-visibility conditions. It's unclear whether those measures would have made any difference on Sunday - but many worry reform is coming too late."This incident once again exposes ​the critical weaknesses of outdated and underfunded air traffic management infrastructure. Safety was maintained thanks to human expertise - but this cannot continue to compensate for systemic deficiencies," said Panagiotis Psarros, Chair of the Association of Greek Air Traffic Controllers.Experts say the problems go beyond ageing equipment. Radios dating back to the 1990s remain in use, and staffing shortages persist despite a tourism boom that brings millions of visitors to Greece each year."The old technical equipment and the lack of personnel in air traffic controllers and electronic technicians... create a bottleneck," said Karaiosifidis.In September, unions ⁠protested by limiting flight arrivals they said exceeded permitted limits, causing delays. They have now threatened to do the same again. 

The shortage of air traffic controllers keeping watch over America’s skies prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to embark on a massive recruitment drive.Now, the FAA has another problem: There are not enough instructors to teach all those new recruits the ropes.Teachers at the FAA’s training academy in Oklahoma City, mostly retired former controllers in their 60s, are increasingly required to work from 7am to midnight, powering through with endless cups of coffee they pay for themselves.Although a new labour contract has boosted instructors’ pay and benefits somewhat — many work part time, earning about $46 an hour — their daily grind isn’t getting any easier as an influx of fresh recruits into the academy has put additional strain on teachers, according to shift schedules and emails obtained by Bloomberg News and interviews with eight current academy instructors who requested anonymity as they’re not authorised to speak to the media.July saw the highest number of academy students in the FAA’s history (550), and August and September could top that. Schedules obtained by Bloomberg News show a sharp rise in the number of double shifts required for instructors, most of whom who are employed by the federal contractor Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), not by the FAA. They teach aviation basics, complex air-traffic scenarios and other courses during the recruits’ two months of training.On March 6, for example, just six of the 105 instructors who teach one facet of the academy curriculum and were on duty that day had a double shift. A preliminary schedule for September 2, distributed in late August, showed 42 instructors from the same group assigned to doubles. (That figure could change slightly as schedules get finalised.) While some instructors request double shifts, in order to make as much money as possible in a short period of time, others refuse.“Due to the surge in hiring for the last 4-5 months of FY25, we will be averaging significantly higher student requirements,” Richard Klumpp, a program management senior director at SAIC, said in a July 30 email viewed by Bloomberg News. “We have way more work than we have instructor availability in September thru mid-December.”In the email, Klumpp also expressed his “concern” in having enough instructors “to help reduce the doubles load on the team.” That load results in some instructors “walking around like zombies,” according to one instructor. A spokesperson for SAIC declined to comment.Some of the instructors who spoke to Bloomberg News said they decline to work double shifts out of concern for their physical and mental health. (At least one teacher at the academy is well into his 80s.) Many of them said they don’t need the extra money, as they earned six-figure salaries before reaching the mandatory retirement age of 56 for air traffic controllers and are financially secure. They teach because they enjoy the job and the camaraderie among instructors, or simply to ward off boredom.“Most of the people who work choose to, it’s not because they have to,” said Andrew Hudson, a financial adviser who works almost exclusively with air traffic controllers. “These people just don’t want to sit around all day.”The FAA was short about 3,900 certified air traffic controllers at the close of its 2024 fiscal year in October, and has said it anticipates it will hire about 2,000 controllers this fiscal year after speeding up the hiring process and boosting salaries for trainees. It expects to hire at least 8,900 controllers through 2028, but admitted in a recent workforce report that “the number of instructors at the FAA Academy creates a practical limit” on the number of trainees that can move through the system.US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said he wants to plug the gaps in instructors amid the surge of trainees by using teaching assistants and other “expert educators” who aren’t former controllers. Those other instructors will begin work in a few months after getting hired and trained. The FAA has research showing they can perform the job just as well as former air traffic controllers, but declined to share it.Several longtime instructors, though, said those substitutes can’t provide the know-how that only comes from years of experience as a controller. Academy classes include basic tabletop exercises with model planes along with more technical instruction on the FAA’s air-traffic tracking and management system, known as ERAM. The FAA is also reviewing the academy curriculum, and could make changes that would reduce the number of instructors required for some courses.Some instructors have recently quit, others are considering doing so, and replenishing the ranks isn’t easy as there’s often little incentive for retired controllers to commute back and forth every few months from, say, Florida or New York, to Oklahoma City. Although instructors say they enjoy teaching the next generation of controllers, persuading former colleagues to ditch their grandkids and golf courses to join them can be a significant recruitment challenge.The previous collective bargaining agreement between SAIC and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), the union that represents 317 academy instructors, provided a $60 daily reimbursement for those who didn’t live in Oklahoma City. But that amount only went so far, leading many instructors to rent an apartment in Walnut Gardens, about a 30-minute drive to the FAA Academy.The new labour agreement raises the daily reimbursement to $90 in January and provides 3% wage increases annually over the three-year contract, which works out to an additional $1.40 or so per hour from the $46.73 per hour many instructors earn now. (Those who teach basic courses make less.) The IAM called it a “major step forward” but said “we still have some work to do to help us recruit and retain instructors while improving quality of life for a workforce that has carried a heavy load to meet the mission.”Instructors who work double shifts often don’t get to sleep until 1am, then might need to get back up around 5am to get to the academy during rush hour for a morning class, or another double shift. Many admitted that it’s impossible to give students their“The thing nobody knows about us is we’re all voluntary — we do not have to be here,” one instructor said. “I can quit today and I’m done.”