Mega Merged: AsA ATC staffing levels

[Roger Standby]

I think you are missing the point WELLCONCERNED. Long haul a/c are being designed with crew rest areas to facilitate rest breaks for the the crews. There is always someone qualified at the controls even while someone is having a rest, be that sleep or other. An engineer on night shift is entitled to a break and work either stops during that break or another QUALIFIED engineer takes over.

LAME to AME: "I'm going on a break, just finish this off and sign it off for me if I'm not back on time" ??? I don't think so.

I am legally entitled to a break on night shift. I expect that someone legally qualified should be able to provide that break for me. Why should I have to hold the responsibity for a/c in my airspace while someone not qualified sits and "monitors" for up to 20 minutes?

This is a legal question, not an efficiency one.

As a sideline, contrary to what management sprouts, double man doggos have been a huge success with regards to fatigue. Resistance was huge initially, but the majority are, by far, now much happier to work more night shifts if it means that their overall fatigue levels are significantly reduced (which they are).

The management that now writes how unsuccesful the concept of double man doggos has been is that same that wrote the lenghty document that proposed the two man concept in the first place. It was expressed that AsA was not going to stuff about about with half arsed measures in relation to night shift fatigue and that at a cost of only 4 employees across the whole of Melbourne Centre, night shift fatigue issues would be wiped out. The statement that argues the concept has not worked is a blatant mistruth- there is NO evidence to back it up except that the beancounters look at it and say you have 4 more controllers than you need. In fact I don't even thinks it's that. The real reason for canning the extra shift is that we do not have enough controllers to make their bloody SDE work. SDE has/will cost more staff. Scraping it thin all over the place won't cover the problems.