Folks,
The latest in The Australian.
Tootle pip!!
Airservices Australia fails to follow own safety plan
Airservices Australia’s failure to provide reliable radar coverage to runway level at Hobart airport is an apparent breach of its own target. The airspace safety body has repeatedly dismissed concerns about the lack of reliable radar below 7000 feet at the Hobart and Launceston airports as unjustified.
This is despite warnings from experts that a tragedy is inevitable unless the situation is rectified — and the revelation that Airservices itself intended to provide radar coverage to ground-level at Hobart airport in a 2010 project developed in *response to a wave of earlier safety concerns.
Outlining the goals of a $6 million TASWAM (Tasmania Wide Area Multilateration) radar system in its 2009-10 annual report, Airservices said the project intended to provide radar surveillance “down to the surface at Hobart”.
But the system it actually *delivered cannot be relied upon below 7000 feet — despite the presence in Hobart of mountains and hills — because its coverage at lower levels is deemed inadequate by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.
CASA yesterday confirmed that it had refused to approve the system’s use below 7000 feet because the “surveillance coverage below this altitude does not meet the coverage requirements”.
Asked if this was due to Airservices’ failure to provide a sufficient number of ground stations to support full coverage, CASA communications manager Peter Gibson declined to comment and said: “This is a question for Airservices.”
Airservices did not directly answer the question when contacted by The Australian but *insisted the system did work to ground level, despite not being accepted by CASA as sufficiently reliable in Hobart.
According to one air-traffic insider, who posted on the industry chat site pprune.org, Air*services reneged on its promise of reliable radar “down to the surface” to cut costs on the project. “(They) decided to try and save some money on the installation by using fewer ground stations than recommended by the suppliers,” he posted. “You get what you pay for.”
Airservices denied it had failed to deliver its own plans. “Below 7000 feet, aircraft are separated using ‘procedural’ standards (pilots reporting their location), however (they) remain displayed (on the radar system) and can be seen by air traffic controllers in Hobart, Launceston and our Melbourne air traffic control centre,” an Airservices spokesman said.
“The TASWAM was a successful project that delivered on its key objectives in a cost efficient and timely manner.”
But businessman and pilot Dick Smith, a former CASA chairman, told The Australian he believed Airservices had bungled the project by failing to install sufficient ground stations.
It was now trying to “cover-up” its failure, instead of installing more ground stations to satisfy CASA and deliver the long-promised radar coverage to the runway level. “It’s outrageous that $6m would be spent and Tasmanians are still getting a 1930s system — and it’s not safe,” Mr Smith said. “If they’ve got 90 per cent towards putting in a radar system, why not do the other 10 per cent? No one can say that having mountains and bad weather and not using radar is safe. It’s not safe. Luckily, we’ve got away without an accident. It (collision with hills and mountains) is the most common form of serious accident, and the cause of our last serious accident (in 2005) at Lockhart River (Queensland) that killed 15 people.”
Instead of radar to the runway, pilots inform air traffic control of their location below 7000 feet.
Mr Smith said he believed the system would inevitably lead to a disaster in Hobart similar to Lockhart River.
Airservices insists air traffic operations in Tasmania are “safe”. It says the system of pilots reporting their location to air-traffic control below 7000 feet is used at large regional airports, including Broome, Rockhampton, Alice Springs, Karratha, Coffs Harbour and Tamworth.
Mr Smith said few if any of these locations had the combination of mountainous topography and weather conditions of Tasmania. “They put this WAM radar system (in Tasmania) because we had some scares — two near-misses where planes were flying around in cloud — that were quite serious near-accidents,” he said.