westausatc - yes, thats the one. Its a sad state of affairs when you say "a manager who was once rated on the airspace they manage", and you have a choice of one.
Reference staffing, how many crews who fly into PH realise that the arrival rate is often set below what the airport can handle because of staffing shortages? Last Wed afternoon for example instead of 6 controllers to run the 5 radar sectors around PH, only 4 were available, 1 of which was rated on only 1 sector, the second only on 2. Extensive wx diversions were predicted. Solution, reduce arrival rate all afternoon (no NOTAM obviously), make controllers do 3.5+ hours on the console without even a toilet break, and no one has to know!
The 'TCU only' thing as far as I can tell is/was an anachronism, stemming from the old TAR spinning faster than the old RSR and the old green screen updating faster, 5 seconds verses 12. Oh, and TCU controllers being supermen, in their minds anyway
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As for moving the inner sector to PH, I never did see an official announcement cancelling PH APP's move to Melbourne centre. I just assumed that once PEA APP moved in, it was cancelled. Moving sectors to PH would be a 180 degree change in policy, umm which happens often now that I think about it.
Back to Ph RWY's though, the quickest/cheapest improvement I can see would be to extend the northern end of 06/24 to allow SIMOPS for A320/B737/B717 and below. Even then, looking at a map I suspect there would be some engineering issues with the creek, and undoubtedly even more issued with various 'anti-' groups.
It all comes down to money. European and Asian airports are to an extent competing with each other for business. If you were a shareholder in WAC, and they announced an expensive upgrade of the runways and taxiways on the grounds that the airport will work better, but won't make any more money, would you support it?