Facts or rhetoric?:
"The skies are getting busier and we have an airspace system designed in the 20s."
The Airspace system we have now has in fact been redesigned again and again - with a marked acceleration in it's design changes and characteristics since about....1991 as it happens.
It could be legitimately argued therefore that any perceived increase in 'close-calls' may in fact be partly as a consequence of these changes themselves, or indeed as a result of the sheer number of changes.
Just in the last few years there has been a myriad of changes - and aborted changes - as a result of the NAS system as well as other new technologies and techniques. NAS itself remains very controversial, and widely lauded as an excellent example of how not to implement critical changes to a complex system. That is not just a personal opinion - it is the documented view of various Airline Pilot groups, the Air Traffic Controllers Association, and the Regional Airline Association.
The system we have now is nothing like the 1920's - in fact there was no system in the 1920's as there were only a handful of aircraft in Australia.
Nor is the system we have now recognisable to anything like that of 20, 10 or even 5 years ago.
There have been 309 near misses in the past three years, including 57 in the first half of this year.
Well no - in fact there were 309 instances of the following:
From the Ministers Response:
A breakdown of separation standards, being a failure to maintain a recognised separation standard (vertical, lateral or longitudinal) between aircraft that are being provided with an air traffic service separation service or an airprox
Note the phrase -
or and Airprox*.
I guess it is not as sensational or sexy to admit that a Technical Breakdown of Separation can mean aircraft passing with barely 100 km between them!
"increased air traffic required greater use of radar."
The radar where it exists is used... where it exists! There can not be a greater or lesser use of it. What relation this has to the number of breakdowns of separation is not clear - because the statisitcs do not show where the BOS was in a radar or procedural environment (where radar coverage / surveillance coverage does not/did not exist). The great majority of those BOS are just as likely to be in a non-Radar environment - so any 'increased use of the radar' (whatever that actually means) will have little effect on the statisitcs - unless of course we install radars everywhere (like in the US perhaps?).
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*Airprox (Australian Definition) - An Airprox is an occurrence in which 2 or more aircraft come into such close proximity that a threat to the safety of the aircraft exists or may exist, in airspace where the aircraft are not subject to an air traffic control separation standard or where separation is a pilot responsibility.
Airprox in fact often make the news through a press release:
http://www.atsb.gov.au/newsroom/2004...e/2004_36.aspx
http://www.atsb.gov.au/newsroom/2005...e/2005_04.aspx
Reports of Airprox** overseas:
Airprox in the UK has a different definition (see links below)
19 APR 2005 UK Airprox Board publishes 2004-Q1/2 report
The twelfth report of the UK Airprox Board (UKAB) was published today. It covers the 109 Airprox reported by pilots and air traffic controllers between January and June 2004. Although the 109 Airprox compares with an average of 93 for the first six months of the years 2000-2003 inclusive, more than half the 109 incidents were assessed as `no collision risk`. During the first six months of 2004, there were eight risk category A Airprox (actual risk of collision), none of which involved civil airliners. (CAA)
Link:
http://www.ukab.org.uk/