[Peetwo]

Mr Dolan : We thought it was more effective to ask Airservices to take a look at the tapes and to provide us with their view as to whether there had been a loss of separation assurance.

Senator WILLIAMS: How long would it take you to look at what Senator Xenophon is requesting? How long would it take you to look at that information? A couple of hours?

Mr Dolan : Possibly. It would need to be done by someone with air traffic control experience so that they could understand it, and we have a range of priorities that we have got our limited air traffic control expertise focused on. This is a matter of the management of limited resources.

Money talks but at what risk??

Tasmanian tourism fears backlash from air traffic controversy  

I can truly understand the concern of the TICT, however if they want to see tourist numbers plummet, try having a smoking hole in some suburb of Hobart; or having the majors parking aircraft because the FAA have bumped us down to level 2...

And today in the Oz:

Air chiefs assure Tasmanian air safe as Dick Smith blasts ‘cover-up’  

• by: Matthew Denholm
  
• From: The Australian
  
• September 04, 2015 12:00AM
  

Tasmania Correspondent
Hobart





Tasmanian Infrastructure Minister Rene Hidding met with Airservices chiefs after raising concerns about Tasmania’s radar system. Picture: Luke Bowden Source: News Corp Australia

Airservices chiefs have assured the Tasmanian government the state’s airspace is safe, as former air safety boss Dick Smith wrote to the organ­isation’s chairman alleging a “cover-up”.  

State Infrastructure Minister Rene Hidding said he met Air­services chiefs on Wednesday after raising concerns about the state’s radar system with Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss.

Led by Airservices Australia air traffic control chief Greg Hood, the delegation also met tourism leaders on Wednesday and state Opposition Leader Bryan Green yesterday.

All received assurances that air traffic control at Hobart and Launceston airports was safe, after a series of revelations in The Australian about failures in the $6 million Tasmanian Wide Area Multilateration surveillance system.

In a letter to Mr Hidding last month, Mr Truss repeated assurances from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority that Tasmanian airspace was safe, and that CASA would review the situation this year.

Mr Green said he had also received assurances from Airservices but had asked to inspect some of the TASWAM infrastructure. The radar-like system was introduced in 2010.

Many involved in aviation, as well as Saab Sensis, the company that supplied TASWAM, believed it would be used to provide full radar control of aircraft to the ground at Hobart and Launceston airports, replacing procedural separation, which relies on tower controllers communicating with pilots.

But five years later, TASWAM is being used only for radar control above 8500 feet, with CASA saying the system’s coverage is inadequate to approve its use to separate planes below this. Instead, below 8500 feet it is used only as a “situational awareness” tool to assist local tower controllers.

Yesterday, Mr Smith wrote to Airservices chairman Angus Houston accusing his organisation of a “cover-up”.

“It’s now obvious that the system didn’t work as planned,” he said. “The people of Tasmania are being let down. To ever think that pro­cedural separation — developed in the 1930s before radar was invented — could be as safe or as efficient as a separation using radar, as we do in every other capital city in Australia, is simply ridiculous.”

No the simple solution is to upgrade/fix the TASWAM system so it performs as originally intended & advertised - Dick, SAAB Sensis & Co call Bullocks on ASA - to do otherwise will put at risk a whole industry and threaten the economic well being of a currently economically depressed Tassie State for perhaps the next twenty years.

Fun'n'games...err no comment...
 

MTF?- You bet!...P2