To put it more correctly, ATCOs in Greece cannot file or delay flight plans by themselves because they don’t have the means/authority to do it. This falls into the hands of Telecom Officers (the guys at AFIS airports) whose job is, among others, this. If an ATCO wants to send a message, he has to pass it to a TO. If there is no TO on the shift then the message may not be able to be sent. (A REA is sent by the central Flow Control ATCO in Athens so this is an exception.)
Ah yes, thanks for the correction 
However AIUI it means that the small island airports can’t do it because there is just one guy in the tower…?
If an ATCO wants to send a message, he has to pass it to a TO. If there is no TO on the shift then the message may not be able to be sent.
How do they send the departure message, then!? Or is than an exception?
[quote fixed – the bq. needs to start at the start of a line]
At the Tower that I work the DEP for a VFR flight would be sent by the TO. The DEP for an IFR is sent when the departure is told by me by landline to the ACC, normally within 1 minute from the actual departure.
Is there no central AIS in Greece with a phone number? That’s how it works in most countries.
Peter, does that mean you want VFR filing in autorouter? Possible but a bit of work due to the archaic technology/workflow behind.
VFR filing would be great
does that mean you want VFR filing in autorouter?
I would not use me as an example because my flying is non-typical but I almost never fly VFR in circumstances where a flight plan is legally required.
The “little Greek islands trip” was an exception.
However some 99% of light GA flies VFR only and any foreign trips need a flight plan. But many also are willing to pay for route planning assistance and I would guess that products such as PFMS or SD fulfill that role. OTOH you have to pay for those, and I already have VFR charts for all of Europe as a moving map under Oziexplorer, and any route long enough to require “planning” I would fly under IFR. But then as I said I am not a typical example
VFR filing would be great
How do you do your route planning, Peter?
At the Tower that I work the DEP for a VFR flight would be sent by the TO.
And if there is no TO?
How do you do your route planning, Peter?
That’s exactly the issue. You need to be airspace aware which is not required for IFR planning. This means in order to be really useful for VFR flight planning, we’d have to do all that tedious work to extract airspaces from the AIPs, basically duplicate what many others have already done. I usually do not develop things unless I believe I can add significant value add on top of the status quo.
Most difficult about VFR flight plan filing is the addressing. There I believe autorouter has an edge over the rest of the market and we developed it because the very same issue exists for Z and Y flight plans where Eurocontrol does not handle the addressing of the VFR portions. Therefore I do think we will offer VFR flight plan filing and management and we will do the addressing portion better than the competition but I don’t believe we’ll offer very good VFR route planning functionality. Well, not unless my wife divorces and I sell two of my companies and lose my medical and get so bored that I start believing VFR route planning is a good use of my time 
And if there is no TO?
There are contingency plans but it is not guaranteed that they will work 100% of the times. The problem is that this “job” is not handed over to the ATCOs, so if there is e.g. TO staff shortage there may be a problem.
The AIS is currently operated by TOs and ATCOs in a combined and ambiguous fashion. Everything is expected to clear in some time. But the final message send/receive procedure lies to the TOs.
