[Peetwo]

From that man Higgins again...

I was wrong: air traffic control creator Neil Bradley  

• by: EAN HIGGINS
  
• From: The Australian
  
• June 24, 2015 12:00AM
  

Reporter
Sydney



Neil Bradley at Aldinga airport in South Australia. ‘It was 15 years ago, and we should now move on’. Picture: Kelly Barnes Source: News Corp Australia
 
The air traffic controller who 15 years ago devised the restrictive regu­lations governing who can provide local weather and air traffic information to pilots has said he was wrong, and the rules should be changed to allow and encourage airport ground staff such as firefighters to do so.  

In 2000, the Civil Aviation ­Safety Authority contracted Neil Bradley, a controller from Adelaide, to solve a problem at Ayers Rock airport.

He came up with a solution that operates to this day, but in the process authored national aviation regulations which only allow current or former air traffic controllers to provide such a service. “I now am prepared to say I was wrong,” Mr Bradley told The Australian.
The problem facing CASA in 2000 was that the tourist trade had over the decades transformed the sleepy outback aerodrome into a serious destination for commercial traffic, and it now handles about 300,000 passengers a year.

“At the time the airlines were getting concerned about the operations into Ayers Rock, with nobody giving them traffic information,” Mr Bradley said.

“CASA said, ‘go up there and put a temporary control tower there’,” he said. “But there was no formal documentation to authorise it, for pilots to receive local air traffic and weather information.”

That required a new set of rules, and the ones Mr Bradley developed for CASA came out of the idea of allowing retired air traffic controllers to perform the service.

The rules to this day say only a Certified Air-Ground Radio Operator can provide air traffic and ­detailed weather information to ­pilots, and CA/GROs must have held an air traffic controllers’ lic­ence in the past 10 years. The only CA/GROs operating today are two retired air traffic controllers at Ayers Rock airport. “On reflection now, they should remove that ­restriction. That was 15 years ago, and we should now move on.”

Aviation industry figures including businessman Dick Smith are campaigning for ground staff at airports without control towers, such as firefighters employed by Airservices Australia, to be trained to operate the Unicom radio to provide pilots with local weather and traffic information as they do in the US.

Mr Bradley said apart from the bigger untowered airports where Airservices has fire stations, many smaller airfields could benefit from a relaxation of the rules.

One example, he said, would be Aldinga airport in the McLaren Vale wine country of South Australia where, he said, the aero club could operate a Unicom service.

“The US has had this Unicom set-up at non-towered airports going way back,” Mr Bradley said.

“They don’t have any requirements to have had aviation experience, but they are generally run by the fireys or it can be the local fixed base operator which provides maintenance and so on.”

I also noticed that an internal ASA Memo was intercepted from Acting(??) CEO Mark Rodwell:

CEO Direct - 15 June 2015


You may have seen an article in today’s The Australian newspaper falsely claiming that salaries for Airservices senior executives rose by more than 40 per cent in the last two years.

Let me assure you that this statement is completely incorrect and the correct information was provided to the journalist last week.

Airservices has today written to both the journalist and the Editor of The Australian requesting that they print a correction to this inaccurate and misleading article—view letter to the editor.

As you are aware, there are tough market conditions being faced by our customers and a range of efforts have been underway for some time to reduce our operating costs across the business.

These efforts have extended to the Executive group and senior leadership team and will continue. This included the implementation of an Executive pay freeze for the 2014–15 financial year and for the upcoming 2015–16 financial year.

Prior to the pay freeze, the average Executive remuneration for our senior executive rose on average 2.25 per cent for the 2013–14 financial year.

The Executive pay freeze is just one way we continue to demonstrate our financial restraint to our customers, industry and government.

Cost saving is all of our responsibility and this extends to the Executive and senior leadership team. I know that across our business we all continue to look for ways to work smarter and more efficiently and thank you for your ongoing efforts in this area.

Mark Rodwell
Acting Chief Executive Officer

Err...Angus, Wazza & 'Staibbed in the back'...tick..tick..tick..tick..tick


 

MTF...P2