1930's Tasmanian Airspace
 

A while ago I was travelling in my friend’s Citation Sovereign as a passenger on a flight from Bankstown to Hobart. Conditions were CAVOK at Hobart however, when we were overhead Flinders Island, instead of getting the direct route to Hobart, we were diverted via Launceston and Clark – 14 nautical miles of completely unnecessary extra distance , flying time and fuel wastage. The pilot was told this route was required because there was a 737 in front of us.

I would presume it’s because the multilateration radar system is not being used in Terminal airspace in Tasmania and even though Airservices claim that procedural separation is as good, that’s clearly ridiculous. Imagine using procedural separation instead of radar at a place like JFK or even Sydney. Everyone knows it’s going to create delays and safety will be reduced.

As we know, the supplier of the multilateration radar equipment issued a press release stating, it was designed to work across Tasmania and to the surface at Launceston and Hobart Airports. They later issued a press release stating that it worked as it was contracted to do.

I’m told the lack of the use of radar at low levels at Tasmania is tied up with some type of demarcation dispute about whether the tower should have the airspace or whether it should be in the Melbourne centre. I presume that’s why we haven’t dropped Class E at places like Ballina, that is en route controllers need to be trained to do approach work as they are in most other countries in the world.

Surely there must be some new controllers coming along who would want to copy the best in the world and operate in a totally professional way, without diverting aircraft unnecessarily and making Australia less competitive.

OFFS.

Yes another 1930s rant with the usual hyperbole and incorrect information. Multilateration is not radar nor is it a terminal area tool. The only airports with MALT are those with A-SMGCS where it tracks surface traffic and there it is a local installation only, not the Wide Area Multilateration as installed in Tasmania.

Whoever told you the non use of radar in HB and LT is a demarcation dispute is just plain wrong. The towers could have a display installed but it would not be able to be used for separation. It would be for information only as the there are latency issues as the radar processors are in Melbourne. This is the case in Rockhampton where there is a display but still procedural control.

Hi Dick,

Well, You could always re-apply for the 'big chair' again, delete the controlled airspace, make it 'Simple' OCTA....or G or whatever.... create a 'new' FS environment, and then you would simply receive a directed traffic information service, one about the other and vice versa just to be 'sure', and arrange your own separation.....Zimples.....

I'm not too sure what the 'RPT' sector would think of that, but, Hey, GA would be 'well served'...(?)

Cheers...:ok:

Further to my earlier post, you claim there was an extra 14 miles of needless tracking because of a diversion. If the 737 was inbound, there are no threshold taxiways at Hobart so the 737 would have needed to backtrack after landing so you would have had to be delayed or held somewhere. It is much easier to delay enroute than manage it in the terminal area. In Alice we needed 20 track miles between arriving jets for the same reason.

Why not ask the pilot to slow down. Track direct and save fuel?

Not knowing what other traffic was around Dick, I can only speculate. There may have been outbound traffic on the 335 or 353 tracks you weren't aware of. From CLARK you would have been on the 300 radial. That would place the lateral separation point around 8 DME Hobart. Much easier to do that than try and do opposite direction overs and unders. Air Traffic Controllers don't try and make things hard. They look for the best solution with the least workload. Especially in a tower like Hobart where one person is doing procedural approach, departures and aerodrome control.

Why isn't the approach being done by the Centre as it would be in other modern aviation countries.?

The tower controller at Hobart also does Cambridge Airport and all the helicopter traffic .

This is madness and just waiting for an accident from extreme overload.

As I said. 1930s airspace. Why don't you people get some proper leadership?

Dick, I think you'd find that we would love proper leadership. A leader to promote aviation and simplify it. Not bury it under mountains of legislation and costs. (Like most of areas of Australian society)

Approach can't be done from ML as Hobart lies under enroute radar coverage staffed by enroute controllers who are not approach rated. Secondly, to do radar approach at Hobart, a terminal area radar would need to be installed at or very near the airport to cover down to ground level. TAR rotates at 15 rpm to provide the refresh rate required to allow TMA separation standards to be applied. Installing a TAR at Hobart and providing the staff would cost millions of dollars to provide very little gain.

Well I reckon the Hobart guys do a bloody great job. Where possible they offer track shortening, change of runways,etc, and are emminently flexible.

Poor form I reckon, to be a passenger, and then complain about the inconvenience to one aircraft without KNOWING what imperatives the other side had to deal with. :ugh:

Wait wait wait, let me get this straight
You are saying there should be more radars and more controllers and maybe chuck in ADSB as well, maybe some more CTA, all so your mate doesn't have to slow down or do an extra 14nm when he goes to Hobart once a year...affordable safety anyone?
Enjoy the scenery of Tassie I say

Absolutely! There may have been another plane behind Dick and his friend, so a reduction may not have worked. Maybe if the pilot offered a speed reduction, he may have got a straight in approach. We all don't know because we weren't there, we can't see the bigger picture as it was on the day, and only have one side of the story. A 14 mile dogleg in a Sovereign is pretty low key in the big scheme of things. Traveling at 800Km/h - that's what - a 2 minute detour?


Gee, the term 'you people' really grinds my gears. It just reeks of elitism.

Overload? . . . . these days there are usually three in the tower, at least daylight hours. The atmosphere is always relaxed, amicable and as on the ball as any tower in the world. On top of that they are unfailingly polite. If unavoidably delayed or otherwise held up a quick little apology is the usual prefix. (Like the postie, the milkman and the nightman . . .. they love to be remembered at Christmas. On the broader front, until the Chinese have fully bought up the land there are a few more years left for Tasmania and its residents to savour the good life, relatively speaking. If I wandered off topic any further . . .. . you'd get the story of the days when East-West Airlines ran a daily service to Hobart from Sydney. . . . . when diversions in the last 20 miles of approach to show the sights were not uncommon.)

.. . . may get up the nose a bit .. . but far worse is the inverted snob . . he stands on his head and looks up his nose at everyone.


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Don't worry Dick, us airline drivers are sick of the rubbish in Tassie as well.

It's 2016, why the f&@# is it still procedural? To be slowed down to 230 kts all the way from the FL's to follow a turboprop or a lightie in front is like watching grass grow.

Full radar. Stars. RNP approaches thanks. This is Australia, not the middle of the Congo. :ugh:

Re "As I said. 1930s airspace. Why don't you people get some proper leadership? "

Ahem..... Many (now disillusioned..??) people thought that we had, or were about to get, some 'proper leadership' waaay baaack when.....

But, 'we' were wrong!

No Cheers, nope, none at all.....:{

The biggest limitation at Hobart is no parallel taxiway, how much time is lost for aircraft landing 12 and then having to backtrack after landing?

Good staff in the tower who handle a mix of traffic from Cessna C172's, Polair BK 117, Islanders, B737-800's to RAAF C17's. The pilots in their airspace range from the first solo at Cambridge to the old dogs like Capt Claret!

Not to mention that bloody summer sea breeze, or the gentle westerly zephyr!

Although there's no excuse if he makes the same mistake again, Dick should be forgiven for being duchessed into believing that being the Chairman of CAA and then CASA involved having any substantial power. I suppose it would have 'felt' that way, while it was politically convenient to pretend to support - or even genuinely support - the changes that were made, and to pat Dick on the back for them (read: line Dick up for blame), but it all goes sour when it affects the political interests of the government of the day (and it worked a treat because lots of people still blame Dick for what did happen or should have happened that didn't).

Flava Saver: I'm listening to the broadcast of the House of Reps as I type. In an amazing coincidence, I've just heard a member of parliament note that Australia's NBN is producing worse outcomes than in the Congo.

Everyone knows that Australia is the only third world aviation country in which you can drink the tap water.

This is not to criticise all of the individuals doing their best (and great job) within the constraints of the air traffic system and resources they have.

CharlieLX: Laying horizontal pieces of tarmac with associated taxiways is an extraordinarily complex task. Especially in islands whose names start with the letter "T". One hopes that an "innovation nation" committed to an "infrastructure revolution" will soon make a major technological breakthrough and figure out how to achieve these seemingly unachievable goals.

I have a dream.

A dream that ...... one day ...... a leader of one of the stultifying mediocrities that presume the name "government" in Australia steps on to the world stage and says:

"We choose to build a runway!"

"Some may ask: Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask: Why climb the highest mountain?"

"We choose to build a runway in this decade, not because it's easy, but because it is hard!"

And once it's built they can get on with the important work of granting monopoly - sorry, 'privileged asset' - rights to millionaires, so that they can milk the citizenry for every spare cent they have.

(It's called profit in return for "taking a risk" people - read your economics textbooks!)

Gives you a warm inner glow, right? Or maybe that's nausea....

Governments don't build runways. Since privatisation, it is the airport operator. In Hobart's case it is:

HIAPL is owned by the Tasmanian Gateway Consortium, which is a joint venture between two major Australian superannuation investment companies:

50.1% share owned by Macquarie Global Infrastructure Fund III (GIF III)
49.9% share owned by Retirement Benefits Fund (RBF) Board

Precisely my point, fuji. If it's a nice little earner for the fund managers without having to build any more tarmac, they're not going to build any more tarmac, irrespective how much the lack of tarmac is stuffing around the people from whom money is being milked. Heck, they'll turn tarmac into warehouses if it's a way to make more money.

I note the majority shareholder has the name "Macquarie" in it. If any of my money were in the RBF, I'd be watching very closely the peas and thimbles being slid around on the table by Macquarie.