More Press

Air restrictions fly in face of safety claims

Cameron Stewart | August 11, 2008

THE Civil Aviation Safety Authority will restrict the number of passenger jets flying through uncontrolled skies, contradicting the Government's claims that the practice is perfectly safe.

The move is the first tacit admission by authorities that the risk of a mid-air collision in uncontrolled airspace in unacceptably high and that something needs to be done.

CASA has called on the air traffic control manager of Airservices Australia to place new restrictions on airspace when there is no air traffic controller available to monitor that portion of sky.

The move follows a series of articles in The Australian that have disclosed the dangers of uncontrolled airspace, highlighting safety warnings from pilots, air traffic controllers and aviation experts.

A shortage of air traffic controllers has increasingly left large parts of Australian skies uncontrolled, forcing pilots to rely on other pilots to avoid mid-air collisions.

The government-owned ASA has said repeatedly that the practice of flying in uncontrolled airspace, using only radio and visual sightings, is safe. But CASA now wants ASA to declare all uncontrolled airspace a "temporary restricted area" -- meaning no plane can fly in or out of this airspace without approval. This gives authorities a way to limit the number of planes that enter uncontrolled airspace and separate them more precisely before they enter the uncontrolled zone. 

Well they did, we have been told that CASA told ASA to do it this way, the clever folks at ASA have decided that well if CASA want’s us to do this then they (CASA) can administer the airspace; or manage the TRA.  CASA needs to work out who can enter, when, how high, and ‘guarantee’ that clearance into the TRA in which TIBA procedures would be used is as safe if not safer than just TIBA alone.

ASA is but merely a service provider, as such, if unable to provide the service can throw it’s “hands in the air” and say “we’ve done all we can”; “look how hard we tried, we made 10 phone calls”.

Of course, like other infamous interdepartmental stand offs, like NAS, this is about saving face and not admitting that a real problem has been identified; shifting blame (the blame which started with ‘it’s the controllers fault’) to the other agency is now the key.  

CASA should threaten to withdraw the AOC that Airshambles has, because they are unable to fulfill their service obligations.; of course that is ‘politically unacceptable’, because significant proportions of the nations economy will grind to a halt, just like the “PR SPIN” stated when controllers take industrial action; except the withdrawal of the AOC would cripple the nation, not like squeezing a pimple in terms of any controller action.

What is happening is a classic game of bluff, CASA now has withdrawn it’s intention to insist on TRAs within TIBA sectors; because Airshambles has told them to come in and work out what the effects on safety are.  Airshambles are good bluffers and again they have made CASA look silly, despite the problems being firmly in the Airshambles corner.

The argument is that broad blanket TRAs are an unknown quantity in terms of risk; where as TIBA risk is practiced, known and historically acceptable; even if it’s at best a third world practice and unacceptable for a modern aviation environment.

So how will Airshambles subject the new requirements to risk assessment, well they can’t without knowing what the intended procedures are; how will CASA make an assessment on this procedure in isolation, well they just can’t; without knowing the procedures.  

TRAs logically, must be infinitely safer than TIBA alone, but how do you prove it?  What are the procedures to be used, what errors are possible and what mitigations can be implemented to increase safety.   Far too many unknowns, far to many people saying we should do something and no one saying we must; time for leadership Russell and Byron and dare we say it BIG TONY.

Russell doesn’t want amended procedures as it doesn’t look good for him and his 17 short (for 17 more days) workforce.  Byron doesn’t want to impose more un-assessed risk on the public; BIG TONY has been sold a pup and has no idea what is really going on.

If Airshambles were an airline it would be grounded; that would be the safest thing to do.

It means pilots will still be flying blind but with fewer other aircraft in the vicinity and better spacing, reducing the chances of a mid-air collision. 

Well see above commentary, it’s possible that more space will be between them, but perhaps not.

However, the new system could cause delays to those aircraft which are not approved to fly through the uncontrolled zone, adding to costs and inconvenience to passengers.

"We have asked (ASA) to look at TRA as an alternative to (uncontrolled airspace) because it gives a greater ability to be aware of all the traffic in that airspace," said CASA spokesman Peter Gibson.

A spokesman for ASA, Richard Dudley, said the service agreed late last week to CASA's request for uncontrolled airspace in Australia to be designated as TRA.

Both these gents had no qualms in giving out the details when pressured, when considered later after getting kicked in the arse, they both deny any safety enhancement or new procedure was on the table.

CASA has been increasingly frustrated by the air safety implications arising from a shortage of air traffic controllers.

The shortage has come about through mismanagement by ASA, which has failed to recruit enough controllers to offset large numbers of retirements and poaching from overseas. 

Cameron, you speak the truth.  How many trainees of the magic 100 abinitios per year have been recruited to come to work every day to play ‘pool and play-station’; because there is no capacity to train them yet?  The poaching will get worse.  The Middle East is bringing a mojor airport online in 2009; they will need 100+ controllers in that region and they will be ever increasing the tax free offer, currently close to $230K per year, to get staff.

ASA accuses air traffic controllers of contributing to the problem by calling in sick and refusing to work extra shifts in an effort to highlight the shortage and help their forthcoming wage claim. 

The inference is that all the sick leave is fraudulent, if so, who's getting counselling for abusing sick leave? See this great post from Don Brown over at ‘Get the Flick’ for a simple explanation of why they might be saying no.

Last Friday, a massive area of airspace between Brisbane and Cairns was left uncontrolled between midnight and 5.30am after a controller called in sick.

According to an ASA "service interruption" report on the incident, six other controllers declined to cover the sick man's shift while four others were uncontactable.

ASA head Greg Russell has accused a small group of "renegade" controllers of leaving the skies uncontrolled to boost their industrial clout in looming wage negotiations. 

Our read on this is, GREG if you think we need to increase our clout you really are delusional.  When the protected ‘bargaining period’ is initiated, if it gets that far,  then you will see the clout readily available to us; this is not a threat it is reality.  You have spent 18 months beating controllers up, very publicly of late,  now they want a ‘pound of flesh’ for their troubles.  You can eliminate their hunger by making a ‘reasonable offer with a bloody good pay-rise’ in it.

It is in your interest to put at least an offer on the table, which you have still failed to do in 4 months, in an attempt to retain your staff before they sign the contracts and book their flights out.  Give us a hint? 3%, 4%, 5%, 6%, <7%;>

But the air traffic control union, Civil Air, says ASA is looking to deflect blame for its own failings. "Airservices seems bent on shifting the blame to those who have been holding a failing system together, rather than accepting the consequences of its own mismanagement of human resources across an extended period of time," Civil Air president Robert Mason said.

Robert Mason is indeed wise.  We have read elsewhere that a single group of 17 staff have been required to work 34 OT shifts between them in 3 weeks.  2 days each in three weeks.  This is at ‘roster creation’ time, before anyone has become fatigued and or sick; that group is rumoured to be losing 3 more controllers before October.

The Sydney tower alone has lost four controllers through resignation or retirement in the past two weeks.

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.

Headlines aren't exactly the facts

Below we include the wages claim from within the VISION DOCUMENT submitted for consideration by Civil Air. THIS IS NOT A FORMAL CLAIM (yet!)

Airservices has obviously leaked this document to a trusted, conservative biased journalist (after reviewing other stories by the author), and he has run with it.  Never let the facts get in the way of a 'good story'. Journalism 101.

You can see the offending articles here (the Oz) and here (ABC online)

There is no hiding that the Vision is asking for pay rises.  But the average wage increase over three years is 39.2% with the majority reportedly about to claim closer to 35%.

Think globally.

Wages currently on offer Ireland 109K Euro's, Germany 110K Euros, Eurocontrol 140K Euros (tax free), Bahrain 140K USD Tax Free, Dubai 180K USD (Tax Free).

With an estimated 3000 controllers short worldwide ANSPs are going to have to loosen their collective purse strings to attract the best ATCs they can capture (lure).  This global market is having a significant effect on retention.  

The current starting wage is having a significant effect on recruitment.  $35K to go into ATC where you have less than 50% chance of getting an ATC career with a maximum wage of $135K or going through a trainee manag

ement position with a base wage about the same and an end wage of significantly higher, without the risk, without the shift work; it's a balance of supply and demand.

Oil Short - Prices up,

Gold short - Prices up,

Rice Short - Prices up,

Wheat Short - Prices up,

ATC Short - Prices up.

The claim that it will cost airlines 10's of Millions is an outrageous slur.  Airservices has converted the recent growth (our productivity) into $100M+ profits, whilst increasing their CAPEEX budget.  

Controllers are asking for their share of already generated productivity. Look at the following table to see where the pay-rises can come from, without effecting the airlines by $1.00.

In the life of our current agreement ASA profit has increased by 96% and our wages 13.6%, which in real terms (real wages growth) is backward and well behind community growth (AWOTE) see our previous post here on AWOTE growth.

Why we endorsed a “NO vote” in 2005.

In our last edition of Certified Shafting, we endorsed a “NO VOTE”; this was not a position taken by Civil Air, who were effectively neutral and Airservices was promoting a “YES VOTE”.

So why did we say to Vote NO, three years ago?

Essentially your employer gave you nothing.  They locked away employment conditions for less than community wages growth.  You achieved through your bargaining one extra hour of work for essentially extra recreation leave.  The hours of extra work equated to more hours than the leave granted across the board.

Your employer failed to concede on any element in the log of claims.

We encourage you to Vote No, because it in our minds was worth at least risking the costs of arbitration to at least ask the hard questions about were we getting what we deserved.

It is pretty clear by Australian standards we did not achieve all that could be achieved.  By world ATC standards we are now amongst the lowest paid when assessed against comparable countries.  This is not to say our negotiators failed us, they merely played the cards available to them given the level of support demonstrated by those covered under the agreement.

We warned of the low rate for AD hours.  We predicted an increase in AD hours as ultimately AD was becoming a more ‘profitable’ option rather than pursuing full staffing.

We predicted record profits being achieved by the employer without ‘real’ profit sharing to you the generators of the profits; locked in at a maximum 1% ‘bonus’.

We warned that FPC status was dead; we didn’t predict the hoop jumping required to progress up the ‘annual increments'.