I see Ben is still slugging away on behalf of you controllers, pity he seems to be a bit of a lone wolf in the media ranks...hmm that 'quick wins' keeps putting out really informative comments to back up Ben's pieces. Top job I've learnt a lot from the QW posts, hope you don't mind mate but I've quoted you here:
quick wins
Posted October 29, 2012 at 1:08 pm
· Ben,
You are absolutely right to report these continuous breaches – these are just the ones that make it to the public arena via ATSB that you get to see. The open reporting culture that existed just a few years ago has been greatly diminished by subtle pressure through to outright overt bullying and intimidation against individual controllers and indeed against their own ATC line managers to ‘manage’ and ‘counsel’ any ‘minor’ breaches ‘in-house’. I think your previous article about the inhibiting of the VOZ aircraft from SYD to BNE showed some indication of that. This is a sign of a couple of things: 1/ how worried senior management possibly are about the truth of how deep the organisation is in the mire, and their desire to keep it out of the press, and therefore out of the eyes and ears of the Minister, and 2/ how operational KPI’s are linked to the toxic structure that is ‘at risk’ salary components – or in straight language: bonuses.
Senior management or corporate affairs people who may read such claims will counter this as false, and tell you of their robust procedures and policies, anti-bullying policies, open reporting culture etc. etc. It is all just convenient manufactured ‘cover’ to be trotted out whenever an independent journalist like yourself, or and independent senator has the temerity to ask tough questions.
Ask the remaining operational people who have experience (a dwindling group), and most will tell you the chickens are coming home to roost, that the current ATC staff demographics and total resourcing has reached a point of ‘un-recoverable’. And they are not kidding. Sydney ATC is currently frantically trying to recruit internally experienced controllers to cover their soon to be retired workforce. This means grabbing them from other units who are already below minimum safe staffing levels – but they will be transferred to Sydney for one reason alone: politics. You see Sydney gets attention when it goes wrong. And Minister Albanese does not like attention. He is getting far too much of it for the wrong reasons at the moment with CASA and ATSB. Now does anyone seriously think Airservices Australia is immune to the types of things we are seeing in Senate estimates with CASA and ATSB?
Airservices are still engaged in a deeply flawed project to reduce the number of sectors that control air traffic in Australia, at a time when their own internal safety reviews, from their own internal safety specialists are telling them they are at high risk by NOT opening IMMEDIATELY, additional sectors to manage the huge increase in air traffic over the past five years. But they are effectively ignoring it. They are ‘rolling the dice’ as you put it. It is in a way understandable. Many of the senior managers come from outside of the organisation with little operational knowledge. Many will only stay three years or so. They can afford to take a three year ‘risk’ and then bail out to the next organisation. The operational staff however are there for 10, 15 , 20+ years. They will bear witness or involvement when the dice comes up snake eyes. So who is really carrying the risk? Apart from the travelling public!
QW you paint a pretty grim picture about the state of affairs in ASA; I only hope the Minister starts paying attention before it is too late!
Singapore Air, Qantas sent on collision course near Perth | Plane Talking