Why not have some civilians at Willy, they do at Nowra (there were moves to put some at Richmond?)
There are alot of controllers who would be more than happy to leave ASA live around Nelsons Bay, Tea Gardens, Hawks Nest (heaven) and go on contract at Willy and provide a service outside of Willies core hours. This would allow flexibilty for the RAAF, we could even become reservists.
Where do I sign.
I believe there are a couple of reasons why there are no civilian (APS) ATCOs employed at Willy:
- it's typically not a difficult base to staff, despite the fact that it been fairly consistently in the public eye lately, the ATCOs are the meat in a couple of political sandwiches and the fact that you know you'll work hard there (and struggle to get leave), given the staffing levels. I'm pretty sure plenty of people want to go there, as the traffic is generally pretty good and, as you suggest max, Newcastle/Port Stephens is a nice place to live.
- Willy, along with a few of the others, is seen as an important base to develop RAAF ATCOs. The base is kept in blue to retain the experience gained for deployments. Look at the operational deployments that have been undertaken as far back as Somalia to see why.
As you well know max, there aren't enough controllers within AsA or RAAF to go around. The 20 or more RAAFies that have transitioned to AsA this year haven't helped. There are political ramifications associated with adjusting ATS at the joint user bases. RAAF is committed to providing ATS at Oakey and Nowra in support of Army and Navy, respectively. There are capability arguments for continuing to provide services at other bases (eg pilot training at Pearce). Rather than saying, 'Righto (for instance) Amberley, you get no ATS for a couple of years while we redeploy these ATCOs to where they're really needed.', RAAF seems to prefer to trim the very thin layer of fat across all the bases.
The reason that Willy ATCOs appear to only be there for local fast jet ops is largely a staffing issue, I believe. It has been worse in the past when they couldn't even cover what the locals wanted, it's just that Newcastle Airport is supporting more than B1900s and Jetstream 31s now. For El Perro's benefit, it's not RAAF ATCOs who decide that they're there for local jets only. The direction that gets you so tired and emotional comes from a higher level. They probably could have chosen to reduce the intensity of local mil flying and spread ATS over a longer period, however, the local (aircrew) hierarchy clearly didn't go for it.
The APS ATCOs employed by Defence are there for core ATC hours. The job ad in the APS Gazette is looking for ATCOs in order to transition Richmond, East Sale, Edinburgh and Nowra to a wholly APS workforce. I assume those bases were chosen because of the dot points above ie those bases are not a popular posting choice and the RAAF gets better bang for it's buck from a development perspective at the other bases. I guess any surplus blue shirts gained would be posted to Darwin/Townsville/Willy/Pearce etc.
Notwithstanding the legal issues that have been touched on, contract controllers for OOH and weekend work sounds like a great job for a semi-retired controller. Pity I'm too young have a go at it...