Chris Manning says the government must investigate why Darwin, Townsville and Newcastle airports have a disproportionately high number of “loss of separation” incidents. The term is used when passenger planes pass too close together, increasing the risk of a mid-air collision.
Mr Manning, Qantas’s chief pilot between 2002 and 2008 and one of the most respected figures in Australian aviation, said while the three airports were not unsafe, they were less safe than the country’s other major airports and this was unacceptable.
“It is safe but, according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau report, there are more incidents per (flight) movement in military airspace,” he told The Australian. “There should be no difference in the level of safety at all towered aerodromes that civil aircraft use.”
Rather refreshing to witness an epiphany, in the press, of a senior industry figure 'suddenly' seeing the light and feeling the urge to pipe up. I wonder why it took so long for the light to come on, it's not as though there hasn't been ample opportunity to 'stick an oar in' to date. Nothing to do with a series of job interviews underway at the moment is it? Nah, course not.
Anyway – news from Townsville re-fueller is that some candidates have declined to complete the process, choosing rather to depart the fix, with much flouncing of skirts and in high dudgeon than remain in the holding pattern.
But in these cases
We still have judgement here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return,
To plague the inventor; this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on th' other.
Macbeth seems somehow more apt than Hamlet these days. Aye well, such is life...