ATC contributed to 15% of flight delays in December
 

https://www.smh.com.au/business/comp...11-p5ewnt.html

Air traffic control contributed to 15 per cent of flight delays in December

"More than 15 per cent of delayed flights were caused by the government body responsible for air navigation safety last month, with its latest aviation network update revealing it’s still marred by staffing issues.

Airservices Australia, which manages Australia’s airspace and employs the country’s air traffic controllers, said it did not have enough staff available over the lead-up to the peak holiday season, which was also hit with a bout of bad weather.

Overall, the service said it was responsible for 6 per cent of total flight cancellations and 16 per cent of the total delays in December.

... "

I wonder if they have ever measured the impact on flight safety of airspace changes/closures?

Australian Aviation Network Overview
December 2023
AsA December

Service Variation Air Traffic Control Towers p17
Alice Springs with 80.5 hours doesn't get a mention.

So with a push to reimburse passengers for delays of 3hrs or more, will ASA be held responsible to the airlines for delaying them!

To be fair - it means 85% of delays aren’t due to ATC…

****ty infrastructure, outsourcing, lack of crew, weather.

Is 15% an unusual number? ATC delays into Perth are crazy at the moment (especially in busy days), but then they have to work with a single runway half the time, no high speed taxi-ways, half of the flights have to drag their arses down to ‘D’ to vacate. The infrastructure is terrible - at least in Perth

Infrastructure in Australia in general is terrible.

As abysmal as the resource planning and support at Airservices has been for the past [insert number here] of years, the airlines with their sneaky practices wear the bulk of the responsibility for this mess. Impossible rostering. Multiple MEL's. Outsourcing everything. Flight consolidations. Old fleets. Wet leases.

This is a nice distraction from the Joycification of the industry.

‘Joycificstion’. How do we get that added to the dictionary?

Yep and they’ve been talking about a new runway for at least 30 years. However the airport operator is of the belief it is not required because the airport isn’t at ‘capacity’.

Same for Melbourne how long have they been talking about a parallel runway?

The problem in aviation in Australia is it is full of monopolies. The airlines are the only market which is competitive and they get to pay for all the inefficiencies of the other suppliers.

I'm guessing this15% figure is only the departure delays.
I wonder what the figure would be if the the inbound holding and speed reductions that subsequently lead to a further supposedly non-ATC delay were included.

I like the way some Airline statistics are reported as late arrivals.If they depart on time but arrive late it’s generally either. ATC or weather related,not the airlines fault.

Do not despair. New runway only a matter of years away. I believe the original timeline was 2023-2028. Any bets on a slide further to the right? The public are beholden to the private interests of PADG which is owned by institutional investors and super funds. This is why we see development of retail precincts such as Woolies, Costco and DFO in favour of pushing ahead with runways. The bucket has to be spilling over before another bucket is contemplated.

Perth Airport Master Plan download

I was going to call BS on the 15%, but as someone pouted out that's probably only departures, if it was arrivals it would be over 50% in Perth.
Gatwick handles roughly double the number of aircraft movements as Perth with 1 runway, far more complex and busy airspace and mostly worse weather. Yes I can hear all the BS excuses about high speed taxiways etc but really, 1 runway with high speed taxiways is better than 2?
Let's not try to polish a turd here, some bright sparks in ASA hierarchy have decided their KPIs are more important than moving air traffic so the ATC peeps have basically said "you give us x amount of controllers, we will handle x amount of aircraft", that comes from inside ASA.
Makes me laugh when the government gets on their pathetic little EV bandwagon meanwhile 100s of tons of avtur are being wasted each week and that's just into Perth

So what is the Perth solution? More controllers?

More managers, obviously.

Once upon a time, Airservices and the Canberra Rowing Club decided to engage in an annual boat race on Lake Burley Griffin. Both teams trained long and hard to reach their peak performance. On the big day, the rowing club won by a kilometer.

The Airservices team was rather discouraged by their loss and morale sagged. Senior management decided that a reason for the crushing defeat must be found, and so a project team was set up to investigate the problem and take appropriate action.

It was found that while the rowing club had eight people rowing and one person steering, Airservices had one person rowing and eight steering. Senior management accordingly hired consultants to study the team’s structure. For half a million dollars the consultants advised that the team needed to be better coordinated so that more effort went into rowing.

The new Airservices team consisted of four steering managers, the senior steering managers, one executive steering manager, and one rower. A performance appraisal system was set up to give the rower more incentive, and he was sent to courses run by the consultants so that he would feel empowered and enriched.

The next year the rowing club won by two kilometers. Airservices sacked the rower for poor performance, sold off the paddles and halted development of a new boat. The money saved was used as performance bonuses for senior management.

The obvious solution is to roster the overtime the same way as other shifts. The EBA stipulates that reasonable overtime should be completed, I don't see why controllers should not do 1-2 additional shifts every 2-3 weeks. This is normal in other companies and it only seems to be the controllers that have a problem with it. ASA has a robust fatigue management system and therefor the constant complaining about fatigue is absolute rubbish.

The airlines and customers should not have to face delays just because the controllers don't want to play their part in the system. We need a clean out and those who don't want to support the company should just go.

Wrong KPI's.

Haha. You were doing so well until you had to get "robust" n there! Good effort!