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Swiss Cheese ASA Style
Australian air traffic control ‘loses’ large jet for hours
April 9, 2012 – 12:36 pm, by Ben Sandilands
In the early hours of Saturday 31 March Australia’s profitable but increasingly dangerous air traffic control system run by AirServices Australia ‘lost’ a Garuda Indonesia Airbus A330-200 with 222 seats for some hours while it was in Australian airspace on a flight from Bali to Sydney.
The situation apparently arose because of a staffing shortage in the air navigation service providers Brisbane control centre and communications or administrative failures which are now being investigated by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).
As a result, the Garuda flight, which the system had somehow lost sight of, was cruising unknown to controllers on a general south-easterly heading at 39,000 feet while an Air Asia X A330-300, with fitted with 377 seats, was cruising at 38,000 feet in an opposing north-westerly heading toward Kuala Lumpur, and at some stage while both were in the same area of the outback skies near the remote Curtin airport, the Air Asia X flight was authorized to climb to 40,000 feet, or right through the cruise level assigned to the Garuda flight after its departure from Denpasar.
The general sequence of events outlined to Plane Talking is that AirServices Australia in Brisbane took down the airspace around Curtin for some five hours soon after midnight Brisbane time on 31 March, declaring it a TRA or Temporary Restricted Area, after it couldn’t find two qualified air traffic controllers to meet a roster requirement.
In a TRA aircraft are responsible for arranging their own safe separation, a procedure which relies on all aircraft in the area listening to and talking to other aircraft on the correct frequency.
However for reasons that have not been determined, the Garuda flight was either left unaware of the TRA, or otherwise failed to gain approval to enter it, meaning no-one else would have even expected it to be there, somewhere.
When AirServices Australia found enough qualified staff to lift the TRA and bring it back under fully controlled separation the controller assigned to it noticed that there were details shown in his display concerning a Garuda flight that if it had left Bali when scheduled should be within his area.
Attempts by the controller to raise the Garuda flight were unsuccessful, and calls to Indonesian ATC were said to have been unable to determine if in fact it had even left for Australia as scheduled.
Soon after that the Garuda flight sought clearance to enter airspace controlled by Melbourne from a position in the airspace that should have been controlled by Brisbane.
Until shortly before that call this meant that ATC directions given to a number of international flights crossing the inland skies of the continent had been made without any knowledge or consideration of the movements of an additional large airliner.
It is believed to have been at this point that Air Asia X was told to climb from 38,000 feet to 40,000 feet. It is not clear whether or how it was known it was safe to this. The rule for passing through the altitude level of another jet when aircraft are subject to radio control and not within radar range is that at least 10 minutes must have elapsed after their positions have passed each other.
There are some very important factual and procedural details to be clarified by the ATSB investigation. If this was a trivial matter there wouldn’t be an investigation.
In the expectation that efforts will now be made to label this story scaremongering, several matters need to be keep in sight.
For Australian ATC to ‘lose’ a 222 seat scheduled airliner for several hours in a supposedly first world country because it can’t even staff its air navigation system or keep tabs on a flight is suggestive of criminal incompetence in AirServices Australia’s management. You don’t just lose airliners.
The responsible minister, Anthony Albanese, has already caused an ATSB inquiry to commence into the nature and frequency of AirService Australia’s record of recent failures in this matter.
There is a series of ATSB reports in which the failure of AirServices Australia to complete its recurrent training obligations or otherwise ensure the competency of its staff have been identified, and
Australia’s airlines have for some time been alarmed by the diminished quality and reliability of AirServices Australia, and have said so, on the public record.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalk...jet-for-hours/
Its only a matter of time. When will Albo do something about this organization
April 9, 2012 – 12:36 pm, by Ben Sandilands
In the early hours of Saturday 31 March Australia’s profitable but increasingly dangerous air traffic control system run by AirServices Australia ‘lost’ a Garuda Indonesia Airbus A330-200 with 222 seats for some hours while it was in Australian airspace on a flight from Bali to Sydney.
The situation apparently arose because of a staffing shortage in the air navigation service providers Brisbane control centre and communications or administrative failures which are now being investigated by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).
As a result, the Garuda flight, which the system had somehow lost sight of, was cruising unknown to controllers on a general south-easterly heading at 39,000 feet while an Air Asia X A330-300, with fitted with 377 seats, was cruising at 38,000 feet in an opposing north-westerly heading toward Kuala Lumpur, and at some stage while both were in the same area of the outback skies near the remote Curtin airport, the Air Asia X flight was authorized to climb to 40,000 feet, or right through the cruise level assigned to the Garuda flight after its departure from Denpasar.
The general sequence of events outlined to Plane Talking is that AirServices Australia in Brisbane took down the airspace around Curtin for some five hours soon after midnight Brisbane time on 31 March, declaring it a TRA or Temporary Restricted Area, after it couldn’t find two qualified air traffic controllers to meet a roster requirement.
In a TRA aircraft are responsible for arranging their own safe separation, a procedure which relies on all aircraft in the area listening to and talking to other aircraft on the correct frequency.
However for reasons that have not been determined, the Garuda flight was either left unaware of the TRA, or otherwise failed to gain approval to enter it, meaning no-one else would have even expected it to be there, somewhere.
When AirServices Australia found enough qualified staff to lift the TRA and bring it back under fully controlled separation the controller assigned to it noticed that there were details shown in his display concerning a Garuda flight that if it had left Bali when scheduled should be within his area.
Attempts by the controller to raise the Garuda flight were unsuccessful, and calls to Indonesian ATC were said to have been unable to determine if in fact it had even left for Australia as scheduled.
Soon after that the Garuda flight sought clearance to enter airspace controlled by Melbourne from a position in the airspace that should have been controlled by Brisbane.
Until shortly before that call this meant that ATC directions given to a number of international flights crossing the inland skies of the continent had been made without any knowledge or consideration of the movements of an additional large airliner.
It is believed to have been at this point that Air Asia X was told to climb from 38,000 feet to 40,000 feet. It is not clear whether or how it was known it was safe to this. The rule for passing through the altitude level of another jet when aircraft are subject to radio control and not within radar range is that at least 10 minutes must have elapsed after their positions have passed each other.
There are some very important factual and procedural details to be clarified by the ATSB investigation. If this was a trivial matter there wouldn’t be an investigation.
In the expectation that efforts will now be made to label this story scaremongering, several matters need to be keep in sight.
For Australian ATC to ‘lose’ a 222 seat scheduled airliner for several hours in a supposedly first world country because it can’t even staff its air navigation system or keep tabs on a flight is suggestive of criminal incompetence in AirServices Australia’s management. You don’t just lose airliners.
The responsible minister, Anthony Albanese, has already caused an ATSB inquiry to commence into the nature and frequency of AirService Australia’s record of recent failures in this matter.
There is a series of ATSB reports in which the failure of AirServices Australia to complete its recurrent training obligations or otherwise ensure the competency of its staff have been identified, and
Australia’s airlines have for some time been alarmed by the diminished quality and reliability of AirServices Australia, and have said so, on the public record.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalk...jet-for-hours/
Its only a matter of time. When will Albo do something about this organization
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Things will only change in THAT organisation when:
* Accountants are no longer in charge of determining CORE & MATURE staffing.
* Training specialists are put in charge at the Training College.
* A return is made to setting a standard to be achieved BEFORE leaving the Training College. Therefore not wasting the fields precious few resources in sorting this mess out.
* A return to management integrity. That is: Excuses not being made for organisational failures. Admitting the problem and FIXING it.
There are probably a few others, feel free to add.................
* Accountants are no longer in charge of determining CORE & MATURE staffing.
* Training specialists are put in charge at the Training College.
* A return is made to setting a standard to be achieved BEFORE leaving the Training College. Therefore not wasting the fields precious few resources in sorting this mess out.
* A return to management integrity. That is: Excuses not being made for organisational failures. Admitting the problem and FIXING it.
There are probably a few others, feel free to add.................
Based on the current annual report there are 1,552 Air Traffic Controllers including trainees. The same report suggests (some job classifications are unclear - probably purposely so) that there are 1,400 managerial & admin jobs. It would seem to me that this is a key issue. Too many hangers-on for the number of guys doing the real work.
If you go through the CV's of the board members, I wonder if anyone on the board knows what the organisation does. The overhead to services ratio's are so far from best practice, that clearly no one is paying attention.
The sadness is that we pay for it while AsA has no effective accountability.
If you go through the CV's of the board members, I wonder if anyone on the board knows what the organisation does. The overhead to services ratio's are so far from best practice, that clearly no one is paying attention.
The sadness is that we pay for it while AsA has no effective accountability.
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The ratio is far worse than that akro. I think it's more like 950 ATC's actually at consoles. The number of admin/managers etc has ballooned, there are titles in there that would baffle you..............
Really? An a330-200 only has 222 seats?
And the -300 has 155
more?
SeatGuru Seat Map AirAsia X Airbus A330-300 (330)
Sooner or later they will live up to their motto.
"Connecting Australian Aviation"
Unfortunately it won't be in the spirit of what the 'group huggers' and consultants envisioned.
I pray it won't end up like the DHL, or the 738 over the Amazonian jungle in class G.
"Connecting Australian Aviation"
Unfortunately it won't be in the spirit of what the 'group huggers' and consultants envisioned.
I pray it won't end up like the DHL, or the 738 over the Amazonian jungle in class G.
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So, they can't staff the seats or keep track of the a/c, however, experienced controllers are not required?
A colleague (ex- AsA controller) got a rejection letter last week after applying to go back (for family reasons). 15 years experience, much of it in busy places abroad, but he isn't suitable, he alleges, due to relevant experience and "cultural fit".
Obviously his "culture" of years of separating aeroplanes doesn't fit with whatever AsA is doing...........
A colleague (ex- AsA controller) got a rejection letter last week after applying to go back (for family reasons). 15 years experience, much of it in busy places abroad, but he isn't suitable, he alleges, due to relevant experience and "cultural fit".
Obviously his "culture" of years of separating aeroplanes doesn't fit with whatever AsA is doing...........
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Tick tock goes the Air Services clock
Jack, your first post was spot on! Describes this bureaucracy perfectly. Under it's bureaucratic dictatorship the frontline is left understaffed, admin and support roles balloon and of course management grow fatter under the leadership of a guy earning $800k per year! Training is sub standard, manpower deficient and the organizations direction abysmal.
Yep, Albo doing a fine job of his portfolio?
Government does a fine job of breeding parasitic management of organizations like Air Services and CASA, and let's not leave out the under resourced ATSB out of the loop.
In the meantime the countdown clock to a major hull loss continues along it's not so merry path, the spinners keep spinning, the politicians and their puppets grow fatter and the bureaucratic pile of steaming pony poo gets smellier.
Out of the three organizations the ATSB won't be the first to cross the 'Race To The Bottom' finish line as they have the privilege of mopping up after the event. The main two contenders for this not so prestigious award are Teams Russell and Skull.
I would like to see both Sandilands and Phelan rewarded for their under appreciated passion for exposing and highlighting the fundamental flaws and incompetence in the Australian aviation governmental bodies. These 'offices of the Minister' are what could be described at best as 'a frightening joke managed by a conglomerate of bureaucratic shysters'.
Tick tock
Yep, Albo doing a fine job of his portfolio?
Government does a fine job of breeding parasitic management of organizations like Air Services and CASA, and let's not leave out the under resourced ATSB out of the loop.
In the meantime the countdown clock to a major hull loss continues along it's not so merry path, the spinners keep spinning, the politicians and their puppets grow fatter and the bureaucratic pile of steaming pony poo gets smellier.
Out of the three organizations the ATSB won't be the first to cross the 'Race To The Bottom' finish line as they have the privilege of mopping up after the event. The main two contenders for this not so prestigious award are Teams Russell and Skull.
I would like to see both Sandilands and Phelan rewarded for their under appreciated passion for exposing and highlighting the fundamental flaws and incompetence in the Australian aviation governmental bodies. These 'offices of the Minister' are what could be described at best as 'a frightening joke managed by a conglomerate of bureaucratic shysters'.
Tick tock
Oh, hang, on, there's nobody watching the screen, is there? 
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A colleague (ex- AsA controller) got a rejection letter last week
If I was him I'd be e-mailing Mr Xenephon, Mr Sandilands and his 'nominal' local member.
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Must be on the black list?
Isn't pride one of the Corporate Deadly Sins? Certainly 'cutting off your nose to spite your face' is not new at AsA.
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Must be on the black list? This supposedly does not exist anymore...
If I was him I'd be e-mailing Mr Xenephon, Mr Sandilands and his 'nominal' local member.
If I was him I'd be e-mailing Mr Xenephon, Mr Sandilands and his 'nominal' local member.
