Spodman, I’m not sure why I should apologise. In the USA, air traffic controllers are just that – air traffic controllers. Everywhere you fly IFR you are separated from other IFR aircraft when in IMC, and when in surveillance coverage you are given full descent protection with instructions and an enabled alarm system.
If you are a professional air traffic controller, why don’t you ask your bosses why you cannot provide the service that is provided in the USA and Canada?
As I have explained numerous times, in the USA and Canada, on descent into a place like Hobart with big mountains around, the responsibility wouldn’t be given to the pilot with an instruction to descend not below the DME steps. There is no such terminology used in the USA and Canada.
Also, at places like Ballina you would be given a full radar separation service to the bottom of the surveillance coverage. However that is not the case here - we still have the old flight service traffic information, or as Airservices have said in their statement about Tasmania:
“… our air traffic controllers utilise information provided by ADS-B for increased situational awareness …”
I know if I was a professional air traffic controller I would be asking why I couldn’t give a proper service at low levels, rather than and old flight service type of service.
Remember, it was I who removed the flight service people from the low levels, with the absolute definite agreed Board and Minister’s plan (there was a Labor Government at the time) to replace it with Class E. This has never happened.
The excuse always given was, “We don’t have as much surveillance coverage as the USA.” This was rubbish because in the J-curve, where we have all our traffic and mountains, we had similar radar coverage to that of busy traffic areas in the USA.
However now that we have spent over $100 million on ADS-B, wouldn’t you think we could train the controllers and provide the service? Surely an enroute controller being able to do a bit of approach work at a place like Ballina can’t be rocket science.
If they can do it capably in the USA and Canada, why can’t we do it here?
I am told by some controllers that actually separating aircraft is simpler than giving traffic, because a controller can solve the separation workload problem by simply keeping an aircraft on the ground for a few minutes. However with our present system, any plane can take off and it immediately becomes workload for the controller.
But keep your mind closed and say it is nothing to do with you as a professional controller, it is all someone else’s fault, and of course nothing will happen until we end up with another horrific accident like the Benalla one. Surely you can’t be very proud of that.