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The Australian today:
CASA admits US ground staff have safety role at airports
The Australian
June 04, 2015 12:00AM
Ean Higgins
The aviation watchdog has been forced to admit that, unlike in Australia, fire-and-rescue officers and other ground staff at US airports without control towers give local air traffic information to pilots to enhance air safety.
The backdown, which follows revelations in The Weekend Australian, marks a major victory for businessman and aviator Dick Smith, who said for 15 years the Civil Aviation Safety Authority had denied that American ground staff perform the service.
Mr Smith yesterday welcomed CASA’s admission, and claimed CASA’s stance on the matter at first represented “a mistake”, but later amounted to “a lie” to protect the organisation, after he presented evidenc*e to back up his stance includin*g to the Deputy Prime Minister, Warren Truss, who holds responsibility for aviation.
The developments come as pressure mounts on CASA and Airservices Australia over calls from pilots, and families of crash victims, to adopt the air traffic control system used in the US.
As reported in The Weekend Australian, large tracts of Australian airspace — including many airports with substantial passenger traffic, such as Ballina in northern NSW — are under radar coverage but declared uncontrolled airspace, with air traffic controllers banned from directing aircraft flying at less than 8500 feet, even though they may still be on their screens.
In the US, all commercial aircraft are essentially always direct*ed by air traffic controllers, even where radar is not available, in which case they ensure separation through procedural methods. At smaller US airports without air traffic control towers, ground staff, often fire fighters, observe local air traffic and relay information to pilots through the Unicom radio system.
Last week, CASA spokesman Peter Gibson told The Weekend Australian: “Unicom services in the US do not provide traffic information services.”
But after being confronted by evidence to the contrary from two pilots who had flown in the US, the manager of an airport in Colorado, and Mr Smith, Mr Gibson admitted yesterday that US ground staff do provide such services. “Thus we don’t dispute what Dick is saying,” he said.
Airservices Australia recently put in a $13.5 million fire-and-rescue station at Ballina airport, with a staff of 17, but it has no license*d Certified Air/Ground Radio Operator to provide local air traffic information to pilots, who have to rely on talking to each other to avoid collisions.
Only licensed air traffic controllers and CA/GROs, who must have held an air traffic controllers’ licence in the past 10 years, are allowed to provide detailed information.
While Mr Gibson said Australian ground staff without such qualifications can still provide some air traffic inform*ation, aviation regulations restrict this to “unscheduled landings by aircraft”, and in practice such staff do not provide the service undertaken by their US counterparts.