Sons succeed fathers in the cockpits of country's Canadairs

By Yiannis Papadopoulos

There is no time to lose in the main hangar of the Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at the airbase in Elefsina, west of Athens. Poised atop ladders or hunkered down in the fuselage of a Canadair CL-215, aircraft engineers with grease-stained hands are busy carrying out repair work. Their unit is on call from the crack of dawn to sunset every day, as water-dropping aircraft such as this one - with 40 years in the skies weighing on their weary wings - are mobilized every summer to do battle with forest fires around the country.

The mission of the officers who fly them and the crews that maintain them is daunting, as mechanical trouble is a regular occurrence. In two cases at least, Kathimerini learns, sons have succeeded their fathers in the cockpits of Greece's firefighting Canadairs. One of them lost his father when...