Apology Email for operations?
 

Anyone else get this today? The A3 CEO seemed to lay blame heavily of Hellenic ATC for certain recent delays of A3 flights. Anyone know the background of this?

Got it, I was not impacted so don't care much. Only shame they are not giving out some miles lol

In today's world of data analytics, it would have been easier to address this E-Mail to those pax/those mail address owners who actually have taken a flight during a specific time period.

I like AEGEAN. Some airspace restrictions won't dent my loyalty.

Despite their mediocre soft product in business class, I love their catering, their service, and their overall performance.

They're great.

I flew mid-July (HAJ-ATH) and the captain informed us that the (admittedly short) delay was due to the European airspace being overcrowded.
I didn't care that much (in the end I arrived maybe 20-25 min later than planned), but I too got the email (and by asking around I believe everyone has received it). This isn't the first time either, if I am not mistaken, that such an email arrives, I remember reading something similar about strikes every now and then and I think crowded airspace has been "blamed" again for causing delays in the past.

Strikes? By whom? What for? Against whom? There are delays in the airspace over Europe, and especially Greece, every single summer I can remember. Whether these are due to Eurocontrol or Greek ATC I have no idea, but I have not heard anything about strikes (yet ;)).

INFO ADDED LATER: OK, after about an hour of searching, here's the bottom line: air controllers at ATH have decided to not handle more than 23 flights landing per hour from 11:20 am till 19:00 pm. Eurocontrol has been informed of this decision and has issued a "warning". All airlines are affected, but since ATH is the major hub for A3, its planes scheduled to be used for late flights will have already accumulated additional delays from earlier on during the day. This whole thing started soon after the center-right ND party won the general elections a few weeks ago. I will obviously not add any comments of mine as to any reasons for the "go slow" other than saying that the air controllers suggest that the number of personnel should be increased. By the way, flights to/from islands are also affected but, with the exception of those from/to ATH, to a much smaller degree.

Don't you therefore mean their hard product is mediocre? The things you love are surely the soft product!

Their business class is the standard European one. As for their fleet, it includes only A32X (plus some turboprops for OA). What would be mediocre about that?

The "I remember reading..." part is an obvious reference to past events.
Same goes for the "every now and then" part... Whenever they occur, or at least on a a couple of such occasions, emails from "management" were sent in a similar form. I hope my point is clear now. I wanted to let the OP know that this isn't any "personalized" message or a rarity. Aegean does that, I would say semi-regularly.

Indeed, but then people who didn't get it and who see mention of it in fora like this would then complain :D

It's clearly a circular, so it's a safe bet that it wasn't a personal missive for your eyes only :D In fact, it's a safe bet that any customers who have provided A3 with their email address and consent to receive unsolicited (marketing) emails would have received it.

And the "background" of this is that air traffic delays cause disruption and congestion all over Europe, particularly in the peak season.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel...-a8916791.html
https://www.independent.ie/business/...-37934906.html

Add to this the latest shenanigans reported above in post 6, and you can see why European airlines tear their hair out in frustration at the patchwork of understaffed and badly-managed air traffic control fiefdoms that hamper travel across Europe.

Here's Eurocontrol's most recent tweet, from 2 hours ago: delays in DUB/LIS/OPO due to weather, but all other issues are operational; staffing issues are impacting several Greek airports, as well as the Karlsruhe and Austria/Hungary/Croatia sectors

Interesting. That may explain the constant delays I have been running into flying from/to Athens the last months. Many, if not all flights I have been on, suffered from about an hour delay.

I got it. I thought it was just good customer service to stay ahead of the curve and tell people the reasons behind what was happening. ATC all over Europe is overcrowded.

If only BA would be as honest about their IT meltdowns...

they want all of us, impacted or not, to know they care about us...

Communication, even irrelevant communication, is better than no communication at all!

Totally agree!