Originally Posted by
topdrop
We (Enroute Controllers) took over the Amberley Approach airspace on weekends and at night back in the early 1990's. Plenty of routes through the airspace into Amberley, Brisbane and Archerfield where LSALT was inside Class C. We did local training for the airspace and funnily enough, none of the controllers had issues or problems with handling it. I subsequently did Approach for 20+ years and I still don't see it as a problem, though I think probably all of us did do a complete ATC course in the College - Approach, Tower and Enroute).
Just make sure the safety case requires the appropriate training and you should be good to go.
I think the main issues that controllers have with this would be:
1. The lack of appropriate training. I am not certain yet, but I believe the “appropriate training” for the change at Tamworth has been deemed as 1 day sim. That’s not really a lot of time to get your head around things like protecting missed approaches etc. A significant amount of enroute controllers at the moment would struggle to even make sense of an approach plate. Sadly the days of doing approach and tower as well on ATC course are gone.
2. I just don’t see any actual efficiency/safety benefit to it. It doesn’t give extra safety from radar monitoring because tower can already do that with TSAD, it’s not allowing more efficient airspace use because it’s now going from an approach procedural environment to enroute radar environment which seems like a downgrade to me. Not to mention the massive increase in coordination which to just creates more chances for an error/misunderstanding. If I could see a benefit to industry I would be all for it, but at the moment it seems they are relying on the fact that pilots instantly think radar means better than procedural to look like they are improving things while actually doing nothing. Ayers Rock is slightly different, but I see similar issues.