Air traffic in Albania returned to normal Friday after being paralysed for two days by a flight controllers’ strike, Tirana airport said.
The first commercial departure took off to from Rinas airport near Tirana to Italy on Friday morning, the airfield said in a statement.
“On Friday, no flights were cancelled”, airport authorities said.
Around 30 flights had been scratched out since Wednesday due to a walkout by air traffic controllers who protested wage cuts.
The strikers’ union said in a statement that their wages have been cut by 62 percent during the last year, as the coronavirus pandemic hammered the air travel sector.
Some flight controllers returned to their posts, but the country also had to employ foreign staff, Prime Minister Edi Rama told ABC News.
According to Rama, Turkish controllers were dispatched to Tirana on Thursday, and a group of Greek counterparts was expected to arrive Friday to assist Albanian staff until the entire control team was consolidated.
The Balkan country deployed troops to secure the airport during the strike, underlining its “particular importance to national security”.
Police said around 20 controllers were arrested in connection with the walkout, while the Tirana prosecutor’s office opened an investigation for “abuse of power” against those behind the strike.
Only one aircraft had managed to land at the airport since the strike began, a cargo plane that carried 100,000 doses of Chinese-made Sinovac coronavirus vaccines.
Albania is in the midst of a heated parliamentary elections campaign, with the vote scheduled for April 25.
Rama had accused opposition parties and President Ilir Meta of plotting a “coup” and seeking to “prevent the arrival of vaccines”.
The president countered that Rama was “exploiting anything” ahead of the elections.
