I'll refrain from asking, "Jase is that you?" but seriously, this is a safety critical system and your solution is to roster shifts controller more shifts on the basis that ASA has a robust fatigue management system. ASA and fatigue risk management system don't even belong in the same sentence.

The ASA fatigue risk management system was designed to find someone to sign off the residual risk potential
Lower Fatigue Risk for ATCs can be signed off by Shift Managers and System Supervisors (or higher)
Lower Medium Fatigue Risk can only be signed off by Unit Manager, Unit Tower Supervisor, ATC Line Manager and Operations Room Manager (or higher)
Higher Medium Fatigue Risk can only be signed off by Service Managers (or higher)
Higher Fatigue Potential can only be signed off by Northern / Southern Operations Managers (or higher).
[perhaps some older position titles but you and others will get the picture].

Someone will sign it off the risk to avoid a service continuity issue, or because their individual KPI's are affected.

Each time the ATC Enterprise Agreement is up for discussion, AsA wants these and other clauses removed. The logic presented is the same as advocated by ReportVisual - "robust fatigue management system". In fact AsA would be very happy to delete the section titled "Hours of Work" in the ATC Enterprise Agreement and put it into an internal document, procedure or guide.

And the BTW, it is my understanding that CASA, as aviation regulator, didn't accept ASA's arguments that ASA had "robust fatigue management system".

Are you the same guy having a laugh in the Network EBA thread?

Being a bean-counter must be such a doddle.

We spend money on things but we want to spend less on those things (except us…) and get the same or better output. Some of those things are humans.

So, we need to get fewer humans to produce the same output as the current group of humans, or pay the current group of humans less to produce the same output. The ideal outcome is that we pay fewer humans, less, to get a better output. (Let’s be honest: The ideal outcome is that we pay them nothing.)

Fatigue is an impediment to the achievement of our ideal outcome. So, we’ll just spin it into an industrial relations bargaining chip used by the greedy and unscrupulous rather than a substantive risk to safety. Manoeuvre arrangements so that fatigue becomes a matter to be dealt with internally and privately, on an individual case-by-case basis, rather than having generally applicable and objective limits.

Come the year 1990, when we have pilot-less cockpits and controller-less ATC, we’ll shift our focus to the humans who maintain the equipment. There’s another bunch of greedy and unscrupulous workers who use fatigue as an industrial relations bargaining chip.

Eventually we’ll achieve nirvana, where the only thing we spend money on is us bean-counters.

Job done!

Probably explains the strategy to RIS the age 55s, then bully out the remaining mature age controllers. Employer of choice.

Good on ya champ. I love it when people trot out the "You must do OT to man the business, your EBA says so..." Now go find the legal definition of "Reasonable overtime". I'll wait...

CityRail tried that bollocks on in Sydney in 2004 and again later years when they were in a similar boat - completely and utterly reliant on their crew working overtime to staff the normal roster. Crews were burning out and come EBA time, they said "You can stick your OT up your asre!". CityRail took them to court arguing they had to do reasonable OT and the courts found there was no acceptable definition of 'reasonable OT', the crew were contracted for 38H a week, and that was all they had to do. It wasn't their fault the network would collapse if they didn't work OT...

To the ASA guys and girls, I say this - Don't put your health or your relationship at risk trying to cover ASA's shortfall. You're no different to anyone else, you're just a number, and while I get that you take pride in what you do and want to keep us moving, if you choose to spend your RDO's at the beach with your family, and as a result I get "Clearance not available", I wouldn't care in the slightest. Your family comes first.

It seems that many Sector Groups and Towers are doing exactly what you have suggesting. That and a whole lot more, and still the system is failing. ATCs are working additional shifts, working changes of shifts so much so that the average punter would be shocked by the number of additional shifts worked, the number of additional hours worked, the sequences of shifts worked, just to maintain a semblance of service continuity.

We have already seen this with BNE, MEL & SYD arrival rates, this is likely to be applied to the ENR sector groups, that is a reduction in traffic (perhaps 2018 traffic levels).

"Sorry, I'm not fit for duty" is all you need to say if you get called. Sure, the extra money is nice but wears thin and gets tiring pretty quickly.

That's an infrastructure delay. When 4 aircraft turn up at once that's 12 minutes of overall delay. 2, 4 and 6. Go and build 3 sets of parallels and away we go. Sequencing is not an ATC delay. It's scheduling and infrastructure.

What makes Australian infrastructure so inefficient vs other countries with the same runway configurations?

The crossing RWY configuration as utilised in YMML for example is not current practice at major airports around the world, if the money is available to build parallels this is done to significantly improve traffic flow.

The money, or the will to improve the situation in YMML apparently doesn't exist.

I believe you would discover that at other airports around the world with a similar configuration they would also have to wait for a landing aircraft to pass through the RWY intersection before they could depart an aircraft on the crossing RWY.

It's that simple I'm afraid.

Delays are awesome. It means people spend more time and money in the terminal where the real money is made in retail. Which is what the airport owners want. If you look at Perth, the government is running billion dollar surpluses so could easily sort out the infrastructure except the airport is privately owned. It's all very laborious and time consuming.

Examples please.

Of what? Airports that utilise only 1 runway or have intersecting runways that manage to move traffic far more efficiently than any here in Australia? Two off the top of my head - BOM and LGW.

With the rules that constrain us we do the best we can, my apologies if its not good enough for you.

Perhaps you could provide us the solution

LGW gets trotted as the beacon of all things single runway.

LGW 26L and 08R have a displaced threshold and taxiways that enter the runway prior to the landing threshold, so the departing is able to line up sooner than would be the case at eg MEL 16 B, or SYD 16R A1/B1/B2. Simple maths really as the aircraft is in position to roll as soon as the lander is vacating via the suitably spaced RETs. Gatwick has a declared capacity of 55 movements per hour and has effective ATFM tools to more easily switch between ARR and DEP biases.

BOM 27 also has a displaced threshold. Both 27 and 32 have a short distance to the runway intersection, this will give you higher movement rates than a 09/14 configuration.

Locations of the runways relative to the terminals is a factor. Another important consideration is the SID's. Do the departures have a left and right split? The application NAP can limit the movement rate as the spacing between successive departures needs to be increased. Rather than 1800m metres and airborne it becomes 2NM or more.

I recall getting a commendation for doing 55 movements per an hour on a single runway (16 before it became 16R), left for BN/CG, right for pretty much everything else.

Sydney gets unfairly compared to other parallel runway airports, give me 2 four thousand metre runways and terminals between the runways and see how well we do?

Apples and Oranges. The debate has been going for 30 years. Investment in some good tools (reduced wake turbulence monitoring) , as well as having enough people for all the positions needed to be opened separately (no joining of APP/DEP/DIR etc )

​​​​​​How about artificial barriers to efficiencies? Sydney Cap - tie one hand behind your back!

Yes, I understand the rules are the constraint. We need to change the rules to increase capacity and throughput. The 80 aircraft per hour cap at YSSY is a good example of an easy fix.
We know most of you are doing the best you can within the constraints.
The result (unnecessary delays) are NOT good enough for me.

Which airports do better?

Manila for one. 06/24 the main 13/31 the cross, haven’t googled the movements but it really is amazing.

Bali & Phuket also do a pretty good job considering 1 runway and mix of small to supers.

Then just look at the efficiency of controlling in places like Jakarta and many places around SE Asia (just not Singapore).

That makes it a 'you' problem. I wish you luck.

The headline of the article should really have been: "Airport privatisation and pretending ATC is a commercial business were really bad ideas for Australians." Subtitle: "(Unless you're milking airports and Airservices for millions.)"