Whats going on with ATC Shortage?
 

Just read this about flight cancellations today in Aus: https://www.news.com.au/travel/trave...b012dc9a6c0205 Also noticed in my own flying, Gold Coast airport has been running as a CTAF sometimes due to ATC shortages, area freq unmanned etc.

Firstly in my opinion controllers in Australia are generally excellent given what i can hear by their excessively careful wording in clearances is a job that must the highest levels of pedanticism.. Can almost hear the supervisors listening over their shoulder for them to forget "climb via the SID" from 4000 to 5000" as opposed to just climb...otherwise of course the pilots will just go off on their own random way.

Can Air Services be such a cluster that they can't fulfill their one main job? Provide air services. Jesus i despair in Aus bureaucracy sometimes.

Have you not read the head office NOTAMs for a while?

Yes I have. That is my point. Any half reasonable private company can deal with that sort of thing. But thanks for the reminder to keep up to date with my NOTAM reading. Almost missed that there were a couple of trees infringing upon the boundaries of the airfield last time i flew. Something about a tower hazard light 3miles away US as well. And Head Office Notams? They are pretty much what ignited my desire to fly. Perhaps we get some of these airfield tree and light surveyors, and train them up for the tower? :)

I notice similarities with Qantas (and a host of other companies also) on this: Airservices laid off a lot of valuable people during COVID and simply have not been able to get them to come back. As a direct result, the controllers left have been working longer than they should with a higher workload looking after larger areas of airspace than they really should (eg. the Alice Springs Class D, which is just stupid), meaning they're getting burnt out and the system repeats.

Airservices are putting new controllers on, but is everyone knows it takes time to get the newbies up to speed. Unfortunately ATC in this country has been in a spiral dive for some months now with no-one at the controls and it's hard to see how it will get better any time soon.

Exactly Piper Cameron. And how short sighted was that. Lay off people that they know take years to train. But presumably, along with that, a lot of those people laid off just don't want to go back. Why would that be? I can only guess it is a mixture of how they are paid and how they are treated by the organization. I get the feeling (although i do not know for sure)...that Air Services must be a pretty ordinary place to work for those that do the actual work, but pretty good for those up top. Similar to the other example you quoted in your post. Well run organizations were able to bounce back pretty fast from Covid.

I would never want to work there. Just read the news items about working there and you’ll soon figure out why there’s a shortage.

Also in my opinion, they discriminate based on age. If you carefully read the application criteria you will realise why.

I sicked Fairwork onto them and Fairwork agreed with me but FW are what you’d call toothless tigers, they couldn’t do anything about it as ASA lawyered up and no law firms will take on age discrimination pro-bono.

According to friends who work there, you'd be 100% correct. It's incredibly stupid too, BTW - they throw out people with years of experience right when they need it most, in preference for someone younger who may or may not stay the course in the current AsA envronment. That's bad for everyone, including those at the top who must be too blind to see it?.

Jandakot ops often restricted these days due to staff shortages. Costing the industry a fortune...sometimes circuits are not available at all.
Back to the same issues we had in the early 2000s, but this time apparently they won't let the experienced guys come back.

....and the failure rate at the college is significantly higher than it was back as well

If the multi billion dollar AirServices OneSky replacement air traffic control system for TAAATS was ready to go live now (and wasn't 10+ years late with a multi-million dollar cost blowout) there would be a real challenge to get it live as CASA require both systems to be run IN PARALLEL for an extended proving period needing a temporary dual workforce. Where will those ATC's come from....??

Someone suggested on another thread that Joe Aston would have a ball with this, hope so.

Lots of executives in Airservices get paid lots of money, even when Airservices provides unreliable or no services. A lot like Qantas.

This, apparently, is the ‘organisation landscape’ out there these days. Employees - especially experienced employees - are an inconvenience to be punted and alienated to the extent practicable.

The worst part is that their 'customers' (us) actually appreciate all the 'employees' are doing because, in this case, our lives really do depend on it!!

What's it going to take for the ATC top-brass to clean up their act and show their employees some love for a change? A serious incident involving awake pilots and tired controllers - and not the other way around?!?? :eek:

No. As with the cure for what ails Qantas, you connect the executives’ remuneration with the actual provision of a thing called a “service” to people called “customers”.

Well back about 20 years ago when they decided to shut Jandakot Tower at 6pm on weekdays there was an incident where one aircraft landed on top of another after the tower closed and the people involved were extremely lucky to survive that. I saw it happen.
They had put in a CAGRO, a retired very experienced controller, but he obviously wasn't there as ATC although his voice was familiar; some people thought the tower must be open. One of the pilots apparently insisted he had been "cleared to land" which was obviously not the case, one controller who had finished his shift saw it all unfold as he was leaving. It was a complete mess. But we did get longer tower hours after that.

Has he worked there?

Don't know. Could have.

They didn't. They gave a lot of experienced controllers voluntary redundancy. Big difference.

But they weren’t redundant in fact. It was a typical public sector pantomime used to get rid of irritatingly experienced people who keep exposing embarrassing problems.

Yes. And the CEO is a former Air Traffic Controller.

For each of the TIBA/TRA and OPR Restrictions NOTAMs there are probably a dozen times where units / sectors / groups / Towers are operating short staffed or without a Supervisor. If the ATCs stopped working O/T or stopped accepting changes of shifts, for an even a week the place would completely collapse.