ATC: an appreciation

[lucky larry]

For the controller working on 122.4/125.7/125.9/118.6 this morning. Well done mate. I've been flying in the Pilbara for three years and never heard it so busy. Calm and collected despite a constant stream of departures, arrivals, reports, clearances and requests, for over an hour straight. Not even once irritated by the multitude of 'drivers' cutting each other off in mid sentence. I for one thank you.:ok:

[Ted D Bear]

working on 122.4/125.7/125.9/118.6
Gee, I wonder why it was busy :}

[Jack Ranga]

When on combine, there are six sectors (and more frequencies!) done by the one controller, the airspace stretches from approximately 40 north of Melbourne to 40 miles south of Sydney. Follow the NSW coast down to Mallacootta (the airspace goes a bit further south than that) in to East Sale, 40nm ring around north of Melbourne across to Mangalore north to Wagga Wagga and back up to Sydney.

This controller handles:

* All ML New Zealand Traffic, inbound and outbound.
* Most (if not all) SY, BN, CB To Tassie to SY,BN and CB Traffic.
* Sequencing into and out of Canberra for all traffic South and Westbound.
* Co-ordinates and processes traffic in conjunction with 3 Civil radar TCU's (SY, CB, ML)
* Co-ordinates with and processess traffic in conjunction with 2 Military TCU's and associated Restricted Airspace (NW and ES)
* And Co-ordinates and processess traffic into and out of 1 Class D Tower (AY and soon to be 2 including WG).

Next time you hear a controller on this group of sectors say 'In with a ground station' you'll know what he/she means!!

As well as the above this controller processes RPT traffic into several OCTA AD's. The most challenging of which is Wagga Wagga. Bank runners, QLINK (On your next Centre visit, see if you can spot a Q400D on the radar!!), Rex and the new Rex Training College, all at once sometimes and inbound and outbound as well.

You'll understand why one particular controller on this group gets the sh!ts with sartime cancellations when you've got a mobile on you :}

I wont bore ya'all with staffing!

[Biggles_in_Oz]

Wow......
:eek:

[morno]

I often applaud the job that the controllers for Western QLD do.

When workload permits, they control basically from west of the Great Divide, from the NSW Border all the way to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and West to the NT Border, SFC to FL600.

Job well done to all controllers Australia wide, :ok:.

morno

[Ted D Bear]

I wont bore ya'all with staffing!


I fly that airspace quite often, Jack Ranga, and the controller does a stirling effort :ok:.

When I get 'In with a ground station' I always think (and occasionally say) "sounds like you need more staff." But, as you say, let's not get started on that one ...

Ted

[Jack Ranga]

Ted, still a bit of pain to come with the staffing! Main thing is that controllers are now being released to other jobs they have won (in some cases, jobs won years ago)

[Mr. Hat]

ATC brothers here is a place you can voice your experience.

Parliament of Australia: Senate: Committees: Rural Affairs and Transport Committee: Pilot training and airline safety (http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/rat_ctte/pilots_2010/index.htm)

And here is a man that will listen:
[email protected]

[Mozzie75]

I think you will find the "Traffic Management" in place for southbound departures out of Brisbane is due to the single runway ops in Sydney.

[Jack Ranga]

Hat,

Yep, I'm sure a few are submitting to the good senator :ok:

[Stationair8]

The ATC guys and girls certainly earn their dollars with all those combined frequencies, but don't you just love it when some pilot starts arguing the point with them about some minor issue or a change of clearance etc!!!!

[boree3]

I think you will find the "Traffic Management" in place for southbound departures out of Brisbane is due to the single runway ops in Sydney.

If you dig a little deeper i think you may find the single runways ops were not the sole cause of the delays south ex Vegas.......;)

Think about it. Why would departures via Laravale to Melbourne need a start clearance due the single runway ops in Sydney?

[flightfocus]

You can't say staff shortage as this would affect KPI's.
For a while it was rebadged Staff Availability. When that euphimism got worn out, it morphed in to Traffic Management

Lipservices Australia does all it can to deny any staffing issues. (Well, I guess from the comfort of HQ in the Alan Woods building it all seems rosy.)

Visit any ATC location and there are staffing issues, but like an alcoholic the first step to recovery is to ADMIT you have a problem - where have not even made it to that stage yet! :{

However we sleep easy at night knowing that there is a full complement of Managers ready to do something about it - one day :mad:

[Dick N. Cider]

Most of the past week there has been significant traffic metering in and out of Sydney due to staff "issues" in Brisbane for the sectors that manage the airspace north and northwest of Sydney. This has also spread to include BN/CG to ML/CB.

There ain't enough people to go around.

Thanks for the vote of confidence though. We're all working our butts off to keep it safe regardless.

DNC

[Dizzy Llama]

Most of the past week there has been significant traffic metering in and out of Sydney due to staff "issues" in Brisbane for the sectors that manage the airspace north and northwest of Sydney. This has also spread to include BN/CG to ML/CB.

sounds like a good story for an "aviation journalist" to dig into. :ugh:

[Blockla]

Hey DNC, Civil Air made a significant issue of staffing in their 'white paper' submission, has CASA, ASA, or anyone in the parliament ever followed up with the details in the submission? Or is denial still a waterway in Africa?

Have the numbers been reviewed since that submission, one can only surmise that the situation is worse now than it was then??? (especially with the new Tower and Approach services)

How many operational ATC are 50+ (not that there is anything wrong with that...)?

[Clearedtoreenter]

I'm often in some of that airspace. Can't say I've heard a cross or sarcastic word from any of those guys and they're often working several frequencies. Sometimes there's a beacon going off or a someone needing some kind of help on top of all that and they just seem to take it all in their stride. As for staff shortages... ASA seemed to find plenty of cash and the KPI's went right out of the window when they 'needed' to swell the GAAP controller numbers... (I heard a rumour that the cost to ASA of each of movement at Camden these days is around $400!)

.

[boree3]

How many operational ATC are 50+ (not that there is anything wrong with that...)?

More and more by the day!

Seriously though i`m led to believe it`s approximately 25% of the operational controllers. Not 25% of license holders but 25% of operational controllers. All of whom will call it a day sometime in the next 5 years. i.e to maintain our numbers we need 40 graduates a year from the college to replace the pending retirements. Let`s not even think about, should the trainee succesfully rate, how long he/she will take to gain the same amount of ratings the departing retiree had.

Have we rated 40 college graduates in the field in the last 12 months? Maybe the minister needs to be asked?

What about the resignations from the other 75% for various other reasons? Rumour has it the figure for the northern zones is over 25 in the last two years.

Trouble at mill........:ok:

[Dangnammit]

Funny thing happened to me late last year, Started 'er up for NVFR flight (CTA departure) and instead of giving me taxi clearance, was given a "Sorry, no VFR flights tonight due staff shortage".

Oh well, went to the pub.....

It's all safe until something happens, isn't it?

[The Green Goblin]

Can they do that??

If it were me I would be saying, "sorry that is not good enough. I will be standing by for a clearance".

I would also be putting in a report.

[Dangnammit]

They actually said to call back later, so we rang the tower straight away and they told us that only IFR flights could be serviced, ML didn't have staff to handle extra traffic. I think they were just able to cope with ML traffic and perhaps some into EN.