[Peetwo]

Skywars Update - Houston says?



From the latest article in the Weekend Oz on the Sky Wars saga it would appear that old mate Halfwit has learnt well from the master Sir A...

“Airservices provides services consistent with these regulatory requirements, with safety of the travelling public and the national airways system is our first priority at all times,”

Also from that little chappy in Tassie's latest article, I don't get the feeling Dick Smith is going to back off anytime soon...

Airservices radar reluctance ‘makes no sense’: expert  

• by: MATTHEW DENHOLM
  
• From: The Australian
  
• September 19, 2015 12:00AM
  

Tasmania Correspondent
Hobart




Air traffic control expert Ken Fairbairn at Archerfield Airport in Brisbane. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen Source: News Corp Australia

An air traffic control expert with decades of experience in Australia, the US and Hong Kong has called for greater use of existing radar to low altitudes at Australian region­al airports.  

Ken Fairbairn, who has broad global experience in air traffic oper­ations, airspace design, training and procedures over 46 years, said Airservices Australia’s refusal to make full use of existing radar “makes no sense”.

Mr Fairbairn, who has worked for Airservices as well as the US Federal Aviation Administration, and spent five years managing radar training in Hong Kong, called for a rethink after this week’s revelations in The Australian of a safety incident at Mount Hotham in the Victorian Alps.

“Australia is a first-world nation­ with a highly advanced radar infrastructure already in place — these resources can be used to ensure the safety of instrument flight rules aircraft,” said Mr Fairbairn, now based in Brisbane. “This includes charter flights into resort areas or mining town airports where paying passengers are entitled to as much protection as the concept of affordable safety can provide.

“(Former Civil Aviation Safety Authority chairman) Dick Smith’s idea to make full use of radar, where available, to provide safe and orderly sequencing to non-tower regional airports should be given careful consideration.”

At Mount Hotham, where one pilot alleges that a “breakdown of separ­ation” between two planes on September 3 threatened 18 lives, radar is not routinely used to separate aircraft below 18,000 feet.

Even though radar works below this level, planes on approach­ to what is Australia’s highest airstrip must “self-separate” by telling each other where they are via radio.
On September 3, one pilot report­ed problems with his GPS and, according to another pilot, gave wildly varying reports of his location, resulting in the two nine-seater charter planes coming into “close proximity” in cloud and poor weather.

The Australian Transport Saf­ety Bureau is investigating while Mr Smith has called for radar control to be extended to lower altitudes at Mount Hotham and other regional airports where it already exists, to avoid similar incidents.

Mr Fairbairn backed these calls. “(Then) pilots would no longer be flying blind in cloud ­approaching or departing from these airports. This category of safety protection is routinely provide­d in Canada and the US.”

He found it difficult to understand why radar control to the ground was not provided at ­Hobart and Launceston airports, despite­ a $6 million Tasmania Wide Area Multilateration radar-like system being installed in 2010.

Below 8500 feet, Airservices uses TASWAM as a “situational awareness” tool only, to assist local tower controllers providing pro­ced­ural separation, where planes are kept apart by controllers relying on radio contact with pilots.

“It would make no sense to spend that money and then use it for situation awareness only,” Mr Fairbairn said.

“There is no logical reason. It would be far better to use it for a radar separation service (to the ground).” While procedural separation was safe, radar control was far more efficient and had added safety benefits, he said.

“In the modern world it (proced­ural separation) is not approp­riate; it’s an obsolete 1930s approach that is far less efficient than radar control.

Airservices acting chief executive Jason Harfield said the level of air traffic service at each airport was determined by CASA, based on detailed risk assessments that considered the number and type of aircraft using the airspace.

“Airservices provides services consistent with these regulatory requirements, with safety of the travelling public and the national airways system is our first priority at all times,” he said.

Does not bode well for Farmer Truss in the lead up to the next election especially when you can't use the Crudlin roadblock excuse anymore -"The wheels on the bus go round & round.."

Tick..tock Miniscule..


MTF..P2