Peuce
You state,
“the answer is still all different”
as your explanation for why we can’t accept modern international air traffic control procedures.
Peuce, I have heard it all before. When I was originally on the Board of the Civil Aviation Authority, I was told that we needed to have unique certification standards for aircraft in Australia – because Australia is different. This cost tens of millions of dollars per year for recertification and modification of aircraft, all meaning less money for real safety issues.
For example, in a 747 the flight data recorder had to be modified so its sampling rate was different to that accepted by ICAO and in the country of manufacture.
As CAA Chairman, I introduced a first of type acceptance from five leading aviation countries where modifications did not have to be made. Have aircraft crashed since then because we have accepted overseas certification standards? No, there has been no measurable effect on reducing safety, in fact most likely the opposite because such a huge amount of money has been able to be reallocated from “technical wine-tasting” trips by bureaucrats to real safety issues, i.e. more simulator training or even getting a simulator in Australia in the first place!
C-change
You mention that in some instances other countries do things better. Why wouldn’t you then copy these things? My success has come from looking around the world and copying the best. Sounds pretty sensible to me. And if I found that the USA and Canada and other countries had air traffic control procedures that gave the same high levels of safety but saved waste, I would certainly want to look at it.
You ask me what target resolution procedures are. Basically, when aircraft are in VMC in Class C airspace the radar “blips” must not meet. Now before you throw up your hands in rage, it doesn’t mean the air traffic controllers let aircraft get that close. It just means that rather than keeping them a ridiculous three miles apart – which is the separation standard when they are both in cloud – it allows the air traffic controller to use professional judgement and let them get closer. In many cases, this saves a huge amount of time and reduces workload.
In the Williamtown situation I referred to at the start of this thread, the extra workload on the controller by holding two aircraft can lead to reducing safety for the airline aircraft that he or she should be concentrating on. Anyway, this is what I am told by international air traffic control specialists.
If the tower had airspace to the boundary like it does in Canberra - took about ten years to get in – the controllers can use a quite different separation standard. They regularly do it in Canberra. Aircraft are allowed to fly to Parliament House when there is an aircraft on approach to the runway from the south.
Of course you could say “what happens if the pilot has to do a missed approach”? Well, the controllers can handle that quite well because they are allowed to make professional judgements in relation to separation.
C-change, once again I say our controllers are the best in the world, but they are treated as if they are kindergarten children by the military hierarchy and not given a proper professional level of responsibility. As I have said, I can imagine why the morale would be low, and I certainly would not recommend to young people to join the military under the present situation. You can see that the people in charge are abrogating their responsibility of providing leadership, allowing individuals to accept responsibility and be accountable.
This has only been going on for twenty-five years. One day it will be changed. I remember with the Victor lane, how Alan Green – the ex-military person then with Qantas - spent his whole life trying to prevent it, claiming that if a Qantas aircraft had an engine failure on departing to the east it could drop down into the lane.
Fortunately we were able to work around Alan Green, and the Victor lane has substantially improved safety by reducing completely unnecessary workload on approach controllers.
Once again, it was copying the best from overseas.
The military explanation of the archaic Class C procedures that controllers must comply with is that the military do not have their own Class C procedures and simply copy those of Airservices. Of course, Airservices has a responsibility to maximise profits, not change to modern international safe procedures.
We need to do this at Williamtown and at other places. One day it will happen. In the meantime, I am going to become quite vocal in explaining to the Australian public how weak our military leaders are and how this is most likely resulting in avoidable fatalities because it’s clear that there is no ethic to ever ask advice or to copy the success from around the world. It’s all about “
we don’t want to ask, we don’t want to know, we do it best, go away”.