Originally Posted by
Dick Smith
Traffic. There was controlled airspace across Australia above FL245.
And above that layer at around FL450 over the entire country it was OCTA to the moon. Australian airspace by volume was almost entirely uncontrolled.
ATC's de-skilled to cope
ATC weren't de-skilled. They still had to recognise a potential traffic conflict (from what was now potentially much less information than they were used to). They were
additionally trained to apply a different procedure to conflicts that happened in that particular airspace versus what they did for a living in the airspace they usually controlled. Once they didn't have to worry about conflicts in that airspace, under the new system, they did. They took over pretty much all the FIS/SAR etc duties that FS used to provide in that vast area of once uncontrolled airspace also. To imply that ATC were somehow de-skilled in that transition is again, disingenuous.