To be fair to Greg Russell, (not that the favour is ever returned) he has only been there 3 years. However he was told from day one by the controllers that the biggest issue facing ATC was the staffing, and that the demographics showed that it was only going to get much worse fairly quickly.
Greg and his aviation Bureaucrats have continued to trade on ATCs pride in keeping airspace open to avoid hiring more staff. This had been going on for years before he got here and he has seriously misjudged ATCs patience to put up with it for ever.
The College does not have even close to the ability to train the numbers they are talking about. The College was streamlined (gutted) 2 years ago and is struggling to ramp up again.
Press releases, put about by highly paid spin doctors, tout figures of 95 and 100 trainees for this year and next year, as of now there is not even a training programme to put them on consoles. We are 7 months into a supposed 2 year training programme and there is no programme.
Dartman2, the media don't care, stories like 'Renegade controllers' are ASA spin given to reporter mates to turn the blame for this fiasco on the controllers. Who have been working 10 days on 1 day off, 60+ additional duties a year, extra shift 8 hour break extra shift 8 hour break extra shift, on top of their rostered shift just to stop it being worse.
We then see stories like this and wonder why on our days off, we come in, and miss our kids plays, footy matches, birthdays, etc etc.
Brett Godfrey from Virgin said the airlines overstaff by 10-12% so this situation doesn't occur, not our lot. They understaff by 10 % then cajole and co-erce, using the equivalent of the fleet manager to ring up people who have said No to try to harass them to come into work.
All the talk at work is ' Who is going where'. Germany are flying people over for interviews, Ireland are doing phone interviews with us for the next three weeks, Approach and Tower controllers have jobs lined up in the Middle East.
There has been no ongoing Simulator refresher or emergency training for at least three years, it is multiple choice Computer Based Training done on your breaks by yourself.
The new model they want to implement wants split shifts,no restraints on rostering, an obligation to work O/T ( the examples I cited above will not be one-offs but able to be rostered) one size fits all multiple endorsements that are a bit like, today you're flying a 737 tomorrow you're flying a 747, and next week its 777. They're all planes, you're rated to fly, so get on with it.The idea of this is to get greater coverage to alleviate the 'minor' staff shortages we have.
We look at what is on offer O/S, and they wonder why we are leaving. Some are just planning to get out and do something that doesn't involve shiftwork and putting up with this lot, and others are bringing retirement dates forward.
ASA has stated in the last year that there isn't a staffing problem, that there is a staffing problem but it is only small,that there is not a reliance on excessive overtime, that there is a reliance on excessive overtime, that there is a staffing problem and it will be fixed by July 08, that there is a looming large staffing problem but that they are recruiting big time to fix it, that there is a large staffing problem and it will get worse before it gets better, and the latest, that there is a staffing problem and it will be fixed in a month.I'm waiting for it to be called the staff shortage (recession) that we had to have.
Time will tell, and I know where I'd put my money.