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Harfwit QON unaswered? ; & La'King in the dark on ATCO work sickie shortages?? - 

Courtesy Matthew Denholm, via the Oz:

‘Air safety threatened by sickies, shortages’, say pilots

By MATTHEW DENHOLM
TASMANIA CORRESPONDENT
@MatthewRDenholm
3:55AM DECEMBER 31, 2022


Australian and International Pilots Association president Tony Lucas, an experienced Qantas pilot, says switching controlled airspace to uncontrolled should occur only in emergencies.

Some of Australia’s busiest ­regional airspace has been left uncontrolled, forcing pilots to “self-separate”, at least 340 times since June, often due to shortages of available, adequately trained air traffic controllers.

The Weekend Australian has obtained 340 “occurrence” reports since June, detailing how Airservices Australia has left normally controlled airspace uncontrolled for periods of sometimes hours or even days.

They reveal frequent resorting to tower closures or uncontrolled airspace across key Queensland regional areas Cairns, Rockhampton, Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast.

Also impacted is a range of regional and outer-city airports or airspace across most states, including Karratha and Broome in Western Australia, Avalon in Victoria, Bankstown, Byron and ­Albury in NSW, Launceston in Tasmania, Alice Springs in the Northern Territory and Parafield in South Australia.

Airservices Australia, which blames a 44 per cent jump in unplanned staff absences, chiefly due to illness, insists the practice, requiring pilots to monitor each other’s whereabouts, is safe.

However, some air traffic controllers and pilots argue it is courting disaster in busy areas, and should be used only in isolated emergencies, not as a routine means of dealing with staffing problems.

Australian and International Pilots Association president Tony Lucas, an experienced Qantas pilot, said switching controlled airspace to uncontrolled should occur only in emergencies.

“It increases our operational complexity and that may have an impact on safety, because we are now trying to separate ourselves from other aircraft and it increases our workload,” Captain Lucas told The Weekend Australian.

“These sorts of events shouldn’t be occurring as a matter of course and they certainly shouldn’t be occurring due to resourcing issues. They should only be occurring in near-emergency situations, such as a fire in an air traffic control centre, for a very short period of time.

“For these sorts of things to be happening regularly, it says you are not building resilience into the system.”

Reasons given in the reports for the suspension of controlled airspace repeatedly include “staffing”, the absence of staff to cover mandated breaks, “staff availability”, “staff sick”, “staff not available”, “staffing contingency” and “staff limitations”.

Transport Minister Catherine King said the government took the concerns seriously and was committed to addressing the problem.

“To overcome potential shortages and meet future demand, Airservices Australia is planning for further staffing intakes across 2023-26,” a spokeswoman for Ms King said.

“The minister takes these concerns seriously and will continue to ensure Airservices Australia is sufficiently resourced to deliver its vital airspace management work, which is critical to preserving Australia’s world-leading reputation in transport safety.”

Airservices said while it was facing “staff availability issues”, it did have enough controllers.

“We employ more than 900 air traffic controllers and require 800 air traffic controllers at any one time to fully staff the air traffic management system across the country,” a spokesman said.

“There are a further 65 air traffic controllers in training. Like all other sectors of the economy, we have experienced staff availability issues this year due to the worst flu season in years and Covid-19 infections.

“Over the past 12 months, our air traffic control workforce has taken 19,700 days of unplanned leave, principally due to illness. This is 44 per cent higher than our pre-pandemic average. But despite this, our service level has been varied by less than 0.1 per cent of the total time this year.”

Uncontrolled airspace was not unsafe, the spokesman said. “The airspace continues to be monitored at our major air traffic management centres, access to the airspace is regulated to ensure aircraft separation and pilots follow internationally recognised procedures to ensure separation,” he said.

“These are safe and globally recognised procedures to manage airspace when there are unplanned absences.”

Civil Air, the controllers’ union, said Airservices – which axed about 120 controllers through early retirement in the 12 months to June – was now struggling to train enough staff to cover all positions.

One controller is so concerned that he has risked his job by writing to Ms King, warning of a “very real fear that there will be an incident resulting in multiple fatalities”.

Controllers said the staff database included people who “retired years ago” and a key issue was gaps in staff adequately trained, or “rated”, to work in different types of airspace.

“We have less resilience and so if someone does get Covid and goes out for a week, covering their shifts is a lot more difficult than it used to be,” said Civil Air president and air traffic controller Tom McRobert.

“Some of the people counted as controllers aren’t fully rated, so can’t do all of the bits of airspace or tower positions. So there is no doubt that we are short. For Airservices to say ‘we have enough controllers’ is not right.”

The high number of incidents demanded attention. “That number needs to start going down and there needs to be transparent and good conversation between Airservices and industry about how we are going to achieve that,” Mr McRobert said.

“My concern is that there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. People are getting tired of doing overtime. There is a level of fatigue. There is no plan for the next 12 months as to how we’re going to get there.”

Mr McRobert believed Airservices cut too many controllers via early retirement, misjudging how quickly the skies would return to near-normal activity after Covid restrictions.

“There’s only one way out of this and that’s training – whether it be cross-training of controllers that we’ve got or training new controllers,” he said.

Harfwit's gold plated crew have only managed to answer a third of the nine QON currently listed on the RRAT Estimates page: (ref: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Bus...mates/rrat)

194. AIRSERVICES - data on impact of cloud cover for regional airports.pdf (AQON)

195. AIRSERVICES - other technologies at regional airports.pdf (AQON)

196 Download question 

197 Download question

236 Download question

237 Download question

238 Download question

Question

Airservices introduced a Retirement Incentive Scheme (RIS) in 2021 for employees between 56 and 65. Please provide a table outlining how many employees have left the organisation since Oct 2021, including their role, years with AA, and whether they left as part of the RIS.

What was the total cost of the RIS?

How many of the positions / work functions that left since Oct 2021 have been re-advertised by Airservices?

How will Airservices meet the workforce demands for more ATCs, support staff and especially experienced senior flight path designers required to implement the measures Airservices has adopted in the Brisbane draft PIR report?

239 Download question

240. SODPROPS Procedures.pdf (AQON)

Answer:

The documentation which sets out the modes of operation at Brisbane Airport includes:

• Brisbane Enroute Supplement Australia (ERSA) https://www.airservicesaustralia.com/aip...EC2022.pdf 
  
• Departure and Approach Procedures (DAP) https://www.airservicesaustralia.com/aip...sTOC.htm#B 
  

Temporary Local Instruction TLI_22_0151: Trial of Expanded SODPROPS use was published on 8 July 2022 to clarify roles and responsibilities and support decision-making for Simultaneous Opposite Direction Parallel Runway Operations (SODPROPS) mode selection at Brisbane. The SODPROPS extension of hours trial and TLI_22_0151 are reviewed 3 monthly to ensure the ongoing safety of operations. The last review occurred on 10 November 2022 where Airservices reaffirmed air traffic services were provided in accordance with acceptably safe practices. A copy of TLI_22_0151 is at Attachment A.

Use of SODPROPS increased by 137 hours in the four months following the release of TLI_22_0151 (528 hours between 9 July 2022 and 9 November 2022, versus 391 hours between 9 March 2022 and 8 July 2022). This resulted in an additional 799 aircraft movements being directed over the water (3,664 movements between 9 July 2022 and 9 November 2022, versus 2,665 movements between 9 March 2022 and 8 July 2022).

MTF...P2