Ballina a Mess
Ballina has problems, don’t you reckon? Have your say, anyone else that uses it.
There is ATC “directed traffic information”, there’s a CAGRS and there’s a CTAF. sometimes you’re getting your information 3 times. But still there’s no one saying, “Right, you go first, then you, then you.” Sometimes everyone holds out, not quite sure of what the others are doing. Then the whole traffic picture is changed, traffic following that wasn’t relevant closes in and further complicates things. The big problem for mine is the lack of a parallel taxiway. That departures for 24 occupy the runway for the backtrack. Similarly landings on 06. And the breeze is so often across the strip and doesn’t dictate that one direction or the other is optimal. It probably doesn’t have the traffic to justify a tower, and the industry doesn’t want to pay anyway, but it can get pretty hairy, especially when access directions are severely limited by activation of Evans Head Restricted Areas immediately south.
Comments from RPT jet crew might be enlightening......?