Air Traffic Control Issues

[Melburnian1]

No doubt will be Management down the line here starting to feel the heat.

The 'SMH' report is paywalled but shows a side-by-side FR24 map of where the VAd and QFd planes were at the time.

There's no mention of Federal Minister for Transport Catherine King, who is responsible for funding Airservices Australia, and nor any comment about whether any staff have been stood down.

The ATSB was apparently only notified of the latest incident today. It's surprising this didn't occur on Sunday, or Monday.

 

[Quickstatus]

Transport Catherine King, who is responsible for funding Airservices Australia

I've been looking into the business/legal character of Airservices Australia ASA a bit more

While it is a Government Business Entity GBE, it is actually a Corporate Commonwealth Entity CCE as distinct to a Commonwealth Company. Another CCE is Australia Post. A CCE is not constituted under the Corporations Act unlike the Commonwealth Companies. Both are owned by the Governmrnt

Regardless, Airservices Australia is self funding. The vast majority of its income comes from charges to aircraft operators for using Australian navigation, ATC and ARFF infrastructure

While self funding, the govt can financially assist via capital injections through Parliamentary Appropriations and/or an Act of Parliament.

Of course any GBE can be privatised.....

 

[markis10]

Here it is



Yes - the On the Job instructors do are active/operational ATC
The Sim section also draw from experienced ATC cohorts - not sure if need to be operational.

The Sydney TCU is different unit to the tower which is experiencing some stress at present.

Re On the job instructors - that’s essentially the practical part of the course near its end, so much like a person learning to drive someone with a full licence is required. Check controllers who assess ongoing licence holders also require to be licensed.

For training there is no current licence requirements AFAIK nor is there for sims which are again more related to the latter part of training, which is why UTAS ran it for a long time. For my course one of the sim drivers never had a licence as they made a somewhat hard to understand decision of telling a glider to go around on their prac.

 

[Melburnian1]

Typically in our instantly connected, smartphone-dominated world of 2026, Australians have relatively short memories.

Mainstream media retain good reach but a growing number either don't read 'news' or rely on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok for what passes as that.

Given there's been more than one concerning incident in Sydney, perhaps more travellers will (temporarily?) become nervous flyers. A small few will abandon the mode but not always practical.

This is a sample of comments made by viewers of 'The Australian' last night and this morning, demonstrating individual opinions differ.

Whether staff are sacked due to a single error "depends": supermarket staff who steal from their employer are routinely sacked, but don't place any lives in danger with that action.

DGMS*

12 hours ago

Geez boys - what are you DOING? I think you have racked up more incidents in the past few weeks than I saw in the seven years I spent in Sydney Tower 25 years ago!

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Richard

11 hours ago

Some bright spark will tell us soon that there are staff shortages. Certainly there is a shortage of competence. This is elementary stuff on a simple enough airport by world standards. Think UK, Europe, USA etc.

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Michael Pending for Rejection

11 hours ago

We are now seeing a definite trend of breakdown in air traffic control. Obviously systemic failure of the system. It is known that runway incursions are deadly. Sydney has a real issue.

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Robyn

11 hours ago

This is of major concern. Often there is a trail of near misses as a pre cursor to a major accident. We all hope these issue are investigated and resolved very soon.

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Randolph

11 hours ago

Catherine King must be called to answer. What is happening to Civil Aviation in our country under her watch!

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Peter

11 hours ago

AI can only be a good thing for air traffic control. The sooner the better. (Daughter)

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Albanese must go OG

9 hours ago

Speaking as an airline captain, Sydney has become an “interesting”’port to operate into. Having operated across all continents except Antarctica, I have experienced the mayhem of LAX, the airspace congestion through the Middle East and various other things and yet Sydney is a challenge - not necessarily from our perspective as flight crew per se, but to misquote Forrest Gump - Sydney is like a box of chocolates - you don’t know what you are going to get each time you go in there.

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Dave_S

2 hours ago

@Kathy you and the traveling public are lucky that the crews in the aircraft are still highly trained and experienced, and these incidents have not led to disaster. As long as the pilots remain well rested and trained, you will be safe. Air services Australia do need a kick up the back side however. They are operating very close to the edge at the moment

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River Red Gum

2 hours ago

Obviously something is going very very wrong I wonder when some of the air traffic controllers will speak out about the internal issues causing this dramatic drop in safety

 

[esseeeayeenn]

I find it impossible to understand or accept why this wasn’t reported on Sunday and has taken several days to emerge. Was it covered up?

 

[markis10]

I find it impossible to understand or accept why this wasn’t reported on Sunday and has taken several days to emerge. Was it covered up?

There is no evidence it wasnt reported immediately by the three companies involved as is required. Some posters need to take off the tin hats and look for sources other than main stream media for the real truth as to what is happening.