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