Where is the SPIKE?

More Bad Press 3

This one came from the AGE

Militant controllers 'shirkers'

• Mathew Murphy
• July 31, 2008

THE head of Australia's air services body has accused the nation's air traffic controllers of shirking work commitments to highlight the current shortage of trained staff.

Airservices Australia chief executive Greg Russell told the Asia-Pacific Aviation Conference in Sydney that absenteeism of air traffic controllers was 20 times higher so far this year as wage negotiations approach.

Mr Russell said that in 2006 and 2007 there were seven interruptions to the staffing of Australian air space, but in 2008 there had been 140 interruptions.

"We may well ask what is different in 2008 and I think the answer is pretty obvious," Mr Russell said.

Airservices Australia was 17 controllers short of the 900 required, but the situation had been the same for more than three years, he said.

The shortage of air traffic controllers made headlines recently when the absence of two controllers due to illness meant air space between Sydney and Canberra was unstaffed for two hours. Mr Russell said the situation was not "palatable" but at no time was there danger to aircraft and international standards were not breached.

Air traffic controllers were averaging almost three times as many sick days a year than the rest of the workforce. "Is it too high? … the national benchmark is about six sick days a year. We are running considerably higher than that at the moment … we have to better manage that absenteeism. It's really hurting us," he said.

Mr Russell said the industry needed major reform, including combining the 32 separate air space sectors across Australia so air traffic controllers could be moved across sectors at short notice.

Over the next five years as many as 500 air traffic controllers would be employed, he said.

He said he was hopeful of being able to sit down with the union and work through a deal by September.

The union did not returns calls from The Age yesterday.

More Bad Press 2

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This one came from last week's Australian:

Air boss blames union for gaps in traffic control

31 July

THE problems with the nation's air traffic control system are the fault of an industrial campaign, excessive sick leave and an outdated endorsement system rather than staff shortages, the chief executive of Airservices Australia claimed yesterday.

Greg Russell told an aviation conference in Sydney there had been only seven incidents where pilots were left flying without air traffic control over 2006 and 2007, years where there were no wage negotiations.

But since October last year, there had been more than 140 interruptions to service, with about the same number of air traffic controllers. "You may well ask what's so different in 2008 and I think the answer is pretty obvious," he said.

Mr Russell said Airservices was short of about 17 controllers on the basis of "the current inefficient way" it operated.

"Is it a critical shortage? No." he said. "But it can sound very persuasive when it's being talked up in a year of wage negotiations."

Airservices had a training and recruitment initiative under way "after some years of neglect".

But it needed to move ahead with a program to improve the efficiency of airspace management, as well as tackling restrictive union work practices in areas such as rostering and absenteeism, he said.

One problem was that 144 separate endorsements were needed to work across the 32 sectors of Australian airspace.

The reform program would reduce the number of endorsements to six or seven, allowing Airservices to move workers around more easily if a controller called in sick.

Steve Creedy

We seek the TRUTH!

As you know in recent weeks the upcoming battle has become public.

The CEO has been lambasting 'a small group' of controllers as the reasons for all his ills.

He has called them (or at least the sub editors have) various words including, militants, renegades and shirkers.  

In what now is a very public battle, apparently all the TIBA lies at the hand of a small group of employees who originally were refusing to work overtime, but now are also 'spiking' their sick leave.  In other words, taking fraudulent sick leave to cause maximum damage.

But what is the truth?  How much sick leave is actually covered by overtime?  How much overtime is used to cover "HOLES IN ROSTERS"?  Is sick leave on the rise at all? If it is rising, is there a link between working harder when at work and having less days off a month?

We have evidence that some groups have as many as 30 shifts each month, and that is at the roster 'population' stage, that need coverage with overtime.  THAT IS BEFORE ANYONE HAS CALLED IN SICK.

So in that particular group, of the 15 employees they each have to work 2 shifts of overtime each, before anyone calls in sick to cover the core roster.  Not bad for a roster that gives most people 10 days off a month.  The average sick leave across the ATC workforce is unknown.  Recently it was about 12 days a year; much more recently it's been 4 times the national average (36), or three times (27), or three times the national benchmark of 6 (18).  But let guess it's close to 12; or one day a month.  So talking of that particular group, 15 shifts will also need to be covered because of sick leave.  A total of 45 shifts or 3 shifts each.

The expectation is that the overtime will be shared equally.  This is far from reality as we all know that we have different work/life balances.  We can also surmise that as a result of our rostering processes that most of the shifts (at least 30) of them are in the middle of the night; which are the most difficult to cover; who want's to work a night shift in the middle of two days off; it effectively counts against both days off, so you end up with 20 odd hours between shifts, but NO DAYS OFF AT ALL.

So how did it get this bad?

We here at Certified Shafting have concluded that it's not the fault of renegades and militants.  It's totally at the hands of management.

In particular the CEO Greg Russell, who's sycophants implemented the SDE without any consequential thought about whether the idea was good or not.

Long term we can see benefit in the SDE, in terms of keeping jets away from lighties, and changes to airspace classifications in the future in terms of training resources.  But what was the rush?

We have burnt countless good will and inherent efficiencies that the previous structure had built in through years of amendment.  Prior to SDE in late 2007, the sector structure has been effectively unchanged since 1995; with the exception of minor amendments associated with transitioning to TAAATS.  These sectors and rosters had been subjected to significant reforms in that time in terms of roster lines required and (mostly) efficient procedures, refined over that time.

SDE was effectively a clean slate (yeah right).  It was predicated on the myth that standardisation exists, which it doesn't.  It is a flawed concept in that CITY PAIRS were used to determine the airspace design and structures; with pertinent exceptions from the model; leading to significant inefficiency and complications.

SDE split rosters.

SDE split people who had multiple ratings into small groups with isolated roles.

The above group, went from 19 Staff requiring 6 people on any given shift, to 15 on one side needing 5 on a given day and 12 requiring 4 on a given day.  One group of 19 people that used to run efficiently now need 27 staff.  This was done in the name of efficiency. WTF?

It was pointed out by middle management that we shouldn't proceed with SDE on the original time lines. This was rejected by senior management as 'politically unacceptable".

These new groups now required night shift coverage; this group used to have 2 night shift staff; now it has 4.  Is there any wonder that night shift coverage has become an issue?

The extra 8 people didn't suddenly appear.  Most of the holes in rosters were covered by overtime; initially it was accepted with grace; but it was soon clear that the staffing problems were going to exist for a significant period of time, people got sick (quickly) of being called every single day off to come to work, our informant tells us that it was not uncommon to get multiple calls every day.

Then when you were at work, it was likely that you didn't have a full complement of staff on most days; single person duty was (and is) relatively common.  So minimum staffing was three but only one controller was on duty; funnily enough this had a propensity to increase your unavailability to work on subsequent shifts; because you were going home far too knackered.  If you were called on your day off; it was likely that you'd be subjecting yourself to short staffing rostering again too, thus it was not a 'normal shift' you were replacing but a "super shift"; and one you were less likely to accept.

This was not isolated to one group, but every group initially up the ECS line; now we head towards further implementation with RS and UAS groups also making amendments into the SDE environment.

It is not surprising at all to us that SDE has been a significant failure.  It was rushed, it was not resourced properly, it was warped into something unrecognisable from the original intent.  

All resistance to SDE was treated as an industrial issue and objectors were dismissed as 'wankers' who didn't get it.  We are past the point of no return, but how can we get out of this bucket of shit?  And will the solution be for the CEO to blame controllers for not coming to work?

Well now 10 months into SDE, where rosters are still short, we ask was it a good idea?

GREG, was it?  Please respond, we'll leave your comment here unmoderated.

Another Day, this time the press is good

15 . ATC emerges as a threat to air safety. Something should be done

Ben Sandilands writes:

It is time for a management clean-out at AirServices Australia as well as Qantas.

AirServices Australia is now emerging as a serious threat not just to public safety, but to Australia’s international reputation.

At last someone is displaying that they get it, well done Ben and Crikey!

It is unprecedented for the managements of Qantas and Virgin Blue, and CASA more recently, and ICAO -- the International Civil Aviation Organisation -- to raise concerns about lack of air traffic control over high density areas of our airspace because of staff shortages.

Airservices runs at the behest of their AOC, this includes a requirement to have enough staff to provide the required services according to the relevant PART under the CASRs; is it time for CASA to really examine if Airservices is capable of running according to the rules that it is required to comply with?

The last time ICAO broke its usually diplomatic reserve in such cases was almost 50 years ago, when the department of civil aviation and the airlines of those days and some senior pilots resisted the installation of black box flight recorders and the costs of weather radar.

Australian aviation has been very, very change resistant for a very long time.

The chief executive officer of AirServices Australia, Gregg Russell, is blaming everything from "renegade" controllers to head-hunting by overseas countries and union demands for his inability to keep the radar consoles manned.

Don't forget he started out blaming previous management for poor planning; yet under his stewardship we cut training and recruitment even further; introduced a business model which required about 10% more controllers and moved 11% of operational staff into management roles, to increase communication.

Yet before Russell took it over, AirServices Australia it had a functioning air traffic control system, albeit one that was imperfect, but one that delivered developed world standards of aircraft separation.

Amen, we blame the FPT, otherwise known as TFN too.

The aviation sector is bewildered by the Minister for Infrastructure, Anthony Albanese, saying nothing about this so far except to repeat Mr Russell’s excuses about unionists wanting more money.

Yes, what is the agenda, is this a union that can be taken on to prove Labor can be tuff on unions too.  After all this is the union that puts those noisy aircraft over your house.

Well, of course they want more money. But CEOs earn their money by improving an enterprise, not leaving gaping gaps in the service and dropping the owners, in this case the government, in boiling water.

This CEO has made massive bonuses for himself and inner sanctum but cutting operational budgets beyond all recognition; removing waste, previously known as the core business.  One of Labor's election promises was to remove public service 'bonuses'; he's not a public servant he's a CEO...  hmmmm!

Russell should review whatever advice he is being given, ask himself who has been misleading the Minister, and insist that the radar consoles be manned, 24/7. If he can't deliver that, he should resign.

Resign, nope, don't give him the honour of resigning, BIG TONY Sack him before he gets you into more trouble.  Talk to the controllers before you swallow the spin that this corporation has become a master at.

More Bad Press

This is one of the crappiest ‘hack pieces’ any of us have ever seen; speechless!

http://www.theage.com.au/national/renegade-controllers-leave-pilots-flying-blind-air-chief-20080725-3l2x.html?page=-1

'Renegade' controllers leave pilots flying blind: air chief

Tony Wright

July 26, 2008

A GROUP of "renegade" air traffic controllers in Melbourne and Brisbane are deliberately closing air space, leaving pilots to fend for themselves on some of the nation's busiest air routes, according to the head of the agency that manages Australia's skies.

Bullshit Tony, it’s bullshit.  It is a completely insufficient that a single controller calling in sick can result in the closure of airspace.

The chief executive of Airservices Australia, Greg Russell, said it appeared a massive increase in incidents in which air space sectors had suddenly been left with no air traffic control was linked to an industrial campaign for big wage rises.

Greg Russell says a lot of things, he’s obviously starting to believe his own spin.  Controllers don’t need to close airspace to get a big payrise; we are a unique profession, and on the open market have proven our worth, all that closing airspace does is highlight that you can’t organise a beer in a brewery. 

Mr Russell said he did not believe the campaign was authorised by the air traffic controllers' union, Civil Air, and he did not believe most controllers were part of it.

Thank goodness, because if you did, you’d be in the AIRC before we could say “Minister sack this incompetent CEO”.

"I do think there are a small number of renegades who are involved in this activity," he said.

If you really did think it was ‘renegades’ it’s not in your nature to not pursue them or punish them; so why haven’t you, this organisation has form, none of it good.

There were only seven incidents in which control of air space sectors had been interrupted in the 22 months between January 2006 and October 2007, rising to a whopping 135 in the eight months since, he said.

It’s amazing how the stats line up. Are the numbers real?  Or just stolen from the union website which was only just starting to track things then?

The New Management Structure started in earnest September 2007, and the ALMs dropped their ratings about 21 days after that.  Most of these people did lots of overtime, now they can’t do any.

The New SDE airspace/sector structure September 2007?  The numbers were just about right then, your dividing of groups has cause massive inefficiencies, and you know it.

Did your stupid ideas come back to bite you?  We told you SDE was stupid; then and now; it’s still stupid.  Where was/is the business case to justify it? The last person to ask that question, Brian, was sacked for doing so.

AWA ideology was more important than the message. Greg, you and you alone (well not including your sycophant managers) have stuffed our company, go away please.

The union's executive secretary, Peter McGuane, emphatically denied any campaign, accusing Airservices of "desperate spin-doctoring".

"There is an acknowledged shortage of air traffic controllers, there is no campaign and our people are sick of being harassed to work on their days off," Mr McGuane said.

McGuane is right, we are all sick of getting called at home to come to work, sometimes 5 times a day, sometimes if you let it go to the answering machine you get, “you must call us back messages”; it’s harrassment; it does effect our health and crushes our morale.

In many of the incidents, air traffic controllers in Melbourne and Brisbane have suddenly declared themselves sick and when their colleagues have been contacted in an effort to find replacements, no one has been available.

Your missing the point, it’s shift work; you don’t call in sick with 24 hours notice if your last shift was only 10 hours ago?  If you start work at 0600 when do you call in sick, when you wake up feeling like shit, or when you magically wake up to give 6 hours notice?  What business runs without ‘contingency’, one person calling in sick should not cripple the service, it's poor management, fact.

Air traffic controllers won the right to unlimited sick leave in the 1990s and are required to give only two hours' notice of their unavailability to work. The rate of absenteeism among air traffic controllers is an average of more than 15 days a year - about three times the national average.

There is no requirement to give 2 hours notice.  And it would very rarely happen that less notice is given, often much much more; but it can happen.  When did 9 x 3 equal 15?  This is deliberate propoganda, what is the national average for sick leave?  What is the national average sick leave in work places that work rotational, non bidding 24/7/365 shift work?

The federal Minister for Transport, Anthony Albanese, also made plain this week he was convinced the rate of uncontrolled air space was linked to the air traffic controllers' industrial campaign.

"It is a fact that Civil Air, the air traffic control union, is engaged in industrial negotiation at the moment over a wages agreement," Mr Albanese told Brisbane radio 4BC. "At the same time, there appears to be a situation whereby you've had a number of people not turning up for work in order to create a situation which causes some difficulty."

BIG TONY it would appear you have swallowed the SPIN, hook, line and sinker.  Has sick leave gone up? Are there more ‘holes in rosters’ than ever before?  Has the over reliance on ‘overtime’ finally impacting and people have just simply reassessed their ability to keep working 10 on 1 off? We need 'oxygen' we want off the ride.

Many industry figures point to an anonymous blog circulated on the internet last November - just as the incidence of uncontrolled air space shot from one to 21 occurrences in a month - that exhorted air traffic controllers to refuse to relieve colleagues who had reported sick.

The blog said the Government would only react to public pressure and media interest, which would only be gained when airline schedules were disrupted or air space was closed.

We often blog, but we haven’t been here that long?  Are you talking about PPRUNE?

"Turn off your phone; don't answer unknown phone numbers; if you are contacted advise you have a 'family commitment', 'have had a drink', are 'too tired' or simply 'unavailable'," the blog advised.

One individuals response to being constantly harrassed to come to work, clearly a conspiracy.

Mr Russell has refused until now to criticise air traffic controllers or to link their industrial campaign to the spike in uncontrolled sectors.

So why is he doing it now? If it were a handful of people it is not in this organisations nature to not call people on doing wrong?  Is Greg about to sack some?  No that would make it worse. Is Greg trying to shame them?  Is Greg trying to poke the bear with a stick and hope you get a nasty reaction?

However, the controllers' certified industrial agreement expires on December 21 and while their union has not yet made a formal log of claims, it has issued a "vision statement" that calls for pay rises ranging from about 30% to 64%.

Mr Russell said such figures were clearly not realistic when Qantas long-haul pilots had received a 3% rise, private sector wage outcomes were about 3.8% and the public sector was receiving rises of about 4.2%.

There is a balance due, the airline employees have received various bonuses on top of base wages whilst times have been good.  We have lost wages growth compared to AWOTE consistently since 1996; we are due for an above average correction. 

It’s not about what others are getting.  It’s about your value in the ‘global market’.  If a CEO gets $1.5M and an annual increase of 14%, it’s market forces, if controllers claim 32% over 3 years it’s ‘not realistic’.  Well why not?  If we can get that pay and much more by going OS, why should we stay? What makes you Greg, so confident we have no choices?

He also pointed to the cost to airlines, which pay Airservices Australia to manage the skies on behalf of the Federal Government.

Did he point to the Airservices profit from last year (FY06/07), and the BIGGER PROFIT that will be delivered for FY07/08? Did he mention that if the claim were to be paid in full it would represent a significantly less amount than the profit for FY07/08 and translate into less than $1.00 per passenger seat; like it would be paid in full.

Most Australian domestic airlines refuse to fly through uncontrolled air space, meaning that at a time when fuel costs are cutting deeply into profits, the requirement to fly around black areas causes immense financial pain.

No, one airline avoids TIBA, sort of.

A regular passenger jet such as a Boeing 737 flying from Melbourne to Sydney requires an extra two tonnes of aviation fuel to fly around what is known as the Canberra sector if it is closed - a broad area between Canberra and Sydney's southern suburbs. With aviation fuel at $1.90 a litre, this equates to an extra $3800 for the journey.

And what would the daily cost of having one extra FPC controller available per shift?  Are these “facts” real? How many minutes does it take to avoid Canberra Group if it is closed?  5? 10? what is the burn rate for a Boeing 737 86 kg per minute?  430 kg, 860kg of fuel?  Not cheap but not two tonnes either. SPIN!

Many international airlines flying in to Australia from Asia have had no choice but to fly through uncontrolled space because they were already in the air when control closed down.

In one incident last month, the entire northern approach to Australia from Queensland to Darwin was uncontrolled after three air traffic controllers in Brisbane called in sick. Fourteen of their colleagues were called in an effort to find replacements, but all were unavailable or uncontactable. The result was that dozens of airliners carrying thousands of passengers had to rely on pilots advising each other of their positions with no assistance from the ground.

Hazards of teams rostering, communal diseases; flu’s and colds are ‘contageous’; or are you/they suggesting it was an orchestrated event?  Have they been counselled, sacked or even hinted at that they ‘did wrong’, have now we guess, shamed in the paper.

What shift was on offer?  A Night shift?  To cover 3 peoples jobs by yourself, attractive no?

How dare people have a life, no it’s a conspiracy that they all said no to working in the middle of the night “ON THEIR DAY OFF”. Most of them were still expected to work their ‘rostered’ shift the next day too, we’re sure.

Despite claims by the union that the problem was caused by a big shortage of controllers, the figures provided by Airservices Australia show the average number of controllers has not changed significantly over the past three years.

The figures Airservices presented say lots of things, they are just wrong, lies, they are using ‘end state’ numbers, we are a long way from end state; at least two years away.  They are figures calculated with ‘rostering efficiencies’ that they don’t yet have; ‘out of our cold dead hands’.

The union claims the system is 100 controllers short. Mr Russell concedes a shortage of 17, but believes the problem will be overcome within a month.

Where are they coming from?  The mythical magic ATC Fairy bus?  Nobody else leaving this month?  Nobody retiring? Nobody getting the shits working for this pack of lying arseholes?  So what happens if TIBA happens in August and September?  With the right numbers there won't be any right, no, that will be wild cat, renegade, industrial action.

Tony Wright, how much of this article did you write? Did you seek any evidence about ‘facts’?  Did you get them checked by a researcher?  What a disgraceful way of getting your biline on a front page. “F” back to journo school for you. Airservices has a habit of SPINNING, they shop around for gullible journo's, whoops.

Andrew Jaspan, We expect better from you, our favourite broadsheet; what a quality biased hack-job, we are not happy.

On a wing and a Prayer

We replicate the following commentary from the Courier Mail.

Why do Queenslanders get it, but Canberra people don't?

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/comments/0,,24048495-27197,00.html

Fly on a wing and a prayer   

By Mike O'Connor

July 21, 2008 12:00am

"GOOD MORNING. This is your captain speaking. Today we will be flying through uncontrolled airspace. To avoid a mid-air collision, the first officer and I will be monitoring a special radio frequency and as long as any pilot heading towards us does the same thing, we should be OK."

You won't hear announcements like this being made as you sit on the tarmac at Brisbane airport because, if you did, there'd be a stampede for the exits. If, however, you are a nervous flyer, read no further for, because of a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers, domestic and international airliners in Australia are now regularly flying through unsupervised airspace.

When this happens, pilots have to rely on TIBA – Traffic Information Broadcast by Aircraft or, more accurately DIYATC – Do It Yourself Air Traffic Control. We presume, you and I, as we buckle our seat belts, adjust our seat backs upright and half-listen to the familiar safety demonstration, that after we take off our progress is monitored by the ever-present and watchful eye of the guardian angel known as air traffic control. We've seen it in the movies, men in open-necked shirts perched in their control tower eyries, staring into radar screens and speaking in staccato bursts to pilots as they guide 300 trusting souls from A to B.

They're still there but there are not enough of them, creating a situation former chairman of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority Dick Smith has described as "incredibly unsafe".

According to the controllers' union, Civil Air, the incidence of unsupervised airspace – pilots telling each other where they are and hoping to God everyone knows the TIBA rules – rose by 63 per cent in June.

CASA's head Bruce Byron disputes this figure but has been forced to concede that "what we may have is some circumstances where TIBA might be declared for maybe a 45 minute or two-hour period".

A check of the Civil Air website shows that on July 15, airspace in southeast Queensland from 30 nautical miles north of Brisbane to 70 nautical miles north of Rockhampton on the main Brisbane-Cairns air route was unsupervised for eight hours.

On July 16, a northern New South Wales sector on the heavily trafficked Brisbane-Sydney route suffered the same fate for five hours. The same site shows that in June, there were 98 closures and service reductions declared in Australian airspace. As of last Monday, there had been 56 this month.

In August last year there were none, in September four, and October two.

Do the simple mathematics and the conclusion is obvious – the air traffic control system is breaking down, devolving to a situation which in some reports controllers have described as "a disaster waiting to happen".

This situation is exacerbated by the fact that Australia is one of the few developed countries in the world to have unsupervised airspace.

This means that no matter how professional and well trained they may be, overseas pilots commanding international flights entering and leaving Australia are flying in an unfamiliar environment when air traffic control is suddenly suspended and they have to switch to TIBA.

Mr Smith has said pilots are not air traffic controllers and are not trained to work out their position in relation to other aircraft. "In other countries, they would not allow aircraft to fly in that airspace," he said.

The body that manages air traffic controllers is Airservices Australia, owned by the Government but funded by the airline industry, and it is this body which has so catastrophically failed to see a looming, global shortage of controllers. Put simply, in a scandalous abandonment of its responsibility to ensure the adequacy of the air traffic control network, it did nothing.

Equally, no one in the then Howard government appeared to know or particularly care. Civil Air says there is presently a shortfall of 80 controllers around Australia and many of the 900 controllers are nearing retirement.

Airservices now is desperately playing catch-up and doubling its recruitment program but this will not put extra controllers in towers for several years.

Behind this frightening scenario is the controllers' demand for significant pay increases but the wage dispute is not the issue.

The issue is that Australian airline passengers are boarding domestic and international aircraft sublimely unaware that their lives may be dependent on a Third World system of air traffic control.

Australia has an enviable safety record in civil aviation but the Government – and ultimately the responsibility lies with the Government – is playing Russian roulette with the lives of Australian air travellers.

One miscalculation, one misunderstood radio message, one garbled transmission and it will all end in flames and tears. Watch then, as politicians from both sides of the political spectrum run for cover.

Every day, they spin the chamber in the gun that passes for our air traffic control system.

It's only a matter of time before the hammer falls on a live round.