“Over the past 12 months, our air traffic control workforce has taken 19,700 days of unplanned leave, principally due to illness. This is 44 per cent higher than our pre-pandemic average.
“But despite this, our service level has been varied by less than 0.1 per cent of the total time this year.
The blokes and blokettes who
do rock up must be killing the pig with their OT! But let's look at their numbers:
We employ more than 900 air traffic controllers and require 800 air traffic controllers at any one time to fully staff the air traffic management system across the country
19,700 days of
unplanned leave, aka Personal ("Sick") Leave. If you are generous to ASA and say they have 950 'certified and workstation-capable' (ie not on light-duties, or in any supervisory or managerial position, but
actually sit at a console and talk on the radio daily) then each and
every one of those 950 controllers took 20 days sick leave last year. Not quite, but close to two sick days a month.
Not knowing what their roster looks like, but if they worked a typical 8 hour day, that's still about 4 weeks personal leave a year when you factor in typical RDO's. That's
a lot. No matter what ASA would have us believe - and not for an instant do I look to blame the controller's. Personal leave is there to be used, and you are not going to win any favours from the bosses for turning up crook, nor are you doing
yourself any favours if you get to the end of your career with 5,000 hours of sick leave 'banked' but poor mental health and a hundred missed birthdays and kids footy grand finals...
But we'll continue on our merry way, safe in the knowledge that ASA has things in hand, while they declare large swathes of airspace as TRA or TBIA. Yep, they're right. Nowt to see here.
