Dick,
I too am behind you 110%.
I am absolutely outraged at the situation described above in a previous posts.
AirnoservicesAustralia said
Everybody concerned needs to stop covering up the holes in the system by working around the holes. If a pilot needs weather and a dedicated flightwatch frequency is not there anymore, then make sure you get it through the ATCO. Don't just try and manage without the weather cos that means you are covering up the problems in the system.
Similarly if a pilot is forced to fly through airspace classified as TIBA due to ATC staff shortage, don't just pay for the service that you did not recieve, refuse to pay. If you pay, you are covering up the problems in the system.
Its easy to say from outside, but if the controllers are being forced to combine sectors above what they would like due to staff shortages, refuse to. By combining the sectors inappropriately, you are just covering up the problems.
If controllers keep working overtime to cover up the staff shortages the staff shortage will never be acknowledged by management, and hence will never be fixed. By working overtime, you are just covering up the problems.
If controllers provide break relief on single manned positions they are not rated on, ASA will think it is acceptable practice not to have rostered break relief on nightshifts.
If everyone stops covering up the problems, all those in charge cannot continue to plead ignorance, and will have to face up to ramifications of their past decisions. They will be forced to fix the problems, otherwise all these problems will one day line up like the holes in the swiss cheese and we will have another Uberlingen, heaven forbid.
Everybody should take the time to reread his post again and take his message completely to heart and act upon it literally every time we go flying and run into the situations he describes.
In particular for the pilots among us his first two paragraphs.
When asking for weather information or other critical safety information and you do not get from the controller because he is too busy to provide it and yet this is the situation air services has forced him and us into and the system they want us to follow then speak your mind on the radio so it is on the tapes and on the record!!!!
Normally of course we are trained to not argue with the controller nor question his decisions as to why maybe he cannot grant us a request such as a new level or routing etc and and of course it must be this way during the course of normal operations or the system would not work.
The situation we are talking about is NOT a normal operation if we ask for critical operational information, such as latest weather and it is denied to us due to the particular controller having too many responsibilities or frequencies.
I will certainly tell the controller exactly what I think if he tries to blow off my request for some necessary information.
If the situation so demands than the pilot can advise him an emergency is likely if the information is not forwarded as requested.
We then need to write down the frequency and time when such incidents occur so that we can then send in details to the Briefing Office and say on the recorded tapes you wish a formal complaint filed, then on to ASA, CASA, or the ATSB as required. If they start getting enough phone calls and formal complaints from pilots every single day when such things occur that should bring more attention to bear on the subject.
His second paragraph re not paying for services not provided is also absolutely critical !!
Make a note of time and frequencies and areas where services are not being provided and then pass them on to your employer and strongly suggest or insist (as you are able) that at the end of the month when they send ASA their cheque that payment for the following flights was withheld because services charged for were not provided.
Every Pilot working for every company needs to do these two things on daily basis as they occur so that more and more bureaucratic attention is drawn to these faults in the system instead of just being covered up because we are too apathetic to spend a few minutes acting on our frustrations at the situation.
If enough phone calls are made, e-mails sent, letters written and Air Services en route charges not paid on a daily basis things will surely be changed.
All the controllers out there need to follow his suggestion is in his other points on a daily basis as the situation demands.
If we let the cracks in the system start appearing every day instead of trying to cover them up to keep things moving along, despite some initial frustrations by both pilots and controllers then attention will be brought to bear and we can fight to have the situation changed.
As far as the situation nomorecatering describes, which is outrageous in itself, if it happened more and more often and SAR phases were declared unnecessarily the cost and paperwork involved by those CASA and ASA along with the pilots report of the situation and circumstances to them and or the ATSB will start raising awareness levels of everyone including hopefully the idiots who made such a decision as cutting out Flightwatch to begin with. I certainly hope you did file a report/compaint describing the situation you described to everybody who is relevant. If not PLEASE DO SO TODAY!!!
To sum up, both pilots and controllers need to be proactive in the circumstances described above in order to get things changed or as we all know the bureaucrats and managers involved will never change anything except for the worst has appears to have happened in this case.
If we don't we all know that at some future point despite the best efforts of everyone who will be involved to prevent it,a smoking hole in the ground and God knows how many dead will be the result.
Too late then to have the findings of coroner's inquest and ATSB sent to ASA and CASA etc.