Thursday, October 25, 2007

Increase capacity or build more runways/airports?

We often hear commentary that air traffic control systems need to be modernised to increase capacity, but what actually limits capacity, poor air traffic control equipment, low numbers of air traffic controllers, complex airspace structures and rules, or available bitumen to land and depart aeroplanes?

As demonstrated in a recent European Parliamentary Report, tabled on 11 October this year, whilst ‘optimising existing capacity’ plays an important role, growth figures for Europe of 5.2% per annum, mean that additional airports are going to be required. The report calls for 25 new airports, 10 majors and 15 medium size aerodromes, to be fully operational by 2025, according to Eurocontrol.

This growth rate means that in 2025 demand will be 2.5 times the amount of movements compared to 2003 levels.

The lead in time for a major airport is approximately 8 years; this means that within 10 years the developments must commence.

The report called for a Master plan to be developed by 2009 to "promote and co-ordinate any national and cross-border initiatives for building new airport capacities". 

"Airports are so congested that if one flight gets slightly delayed, it affects many other airports. The lack of airport capacity is therefore not just a national problem - it is a European problem", pointed out Danish Liberal MEP Anne Jensen, who drafted the report. 

The report adds that building new capacity would also be a first step towards averting unnecessary air pollution caused by en route or ramp congestion, but says that additional measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions and noise - such as including aviation in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme taxing fuel or differentiating airport charges according to environmental performance - would be necessary. 

But what about capacity now, well there are limitations imposed on routings and sector through put right now; a way to increase capacity is to bring online new technologies, such as airborne procedures, where pilots are assigned separation responsibilities relating to other aircraft, but these are still years away from being operational and are based on ADS-B technology, including ADS-B-IN where aircraft receive information about other aircraft in the vicinity and display that to the pilots; currently ADS-B-OUT is in use, where by aircraft transmit information based on satellite derived positions.

Other Air Traffic Control technology including separation or conflict detection tools may increase capacity because controllers will become more reactionary rather than planning forward to avoid conflictions. But this needs to be 100% accurate, at present the algorithms are getting close, it’s still not good enough; one slipping through the “cracks” is one too many.

Surveillance (including ADS-B, Multilateration and radar) and synthetic displays are the way of the future; but who pays for all this infrastructure? So far the airline industry is equipping themselves with ADS-B; but what use is it while light aircraft have access to the same piece of the sky without requiring the technology?

To use all this equipment, and develop it, it requires bodies at the coal face. We have significant anecdotal evidence that there is a world wide shortage of controllers. In the USA we have seen retirements far exceed the forecasts, mostly down to poor industrial relations with the employer, this is exacerbated by the fact that eligible to retire controllers may receive higher ‘pension wages’ and bigger annual increases in retirement than staying in the workforce.

Elsewhere we have seen limited recruitment campaigns where pass rates are still globally measured around 60%. Most ANSPs are becoming or have become privatised, or if not are run as separate profit making divisions (government owned businesses, run in business models). In order to return profits, staffing levels are reduced to the core requirements (or below them) and recruitment's are undertaken to meet the retirement forecasts and little else.

So who will be available to implement and develop this new technology? Who will be able to perform increased ATC duties at additional facilities (aerodromes) that will be built to meet current growth forecasts? Ask your managers what is being done to cater for long term growth? In some parts of the world growth is in the double % digits.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Sleeping a criminal offence or a sign?

We reproduce an article from the "Scotsman" link provided below.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thu 18 Oct 2007
Air traffic controllers suspended for sleeping on duty
NICK PISA IN ROME
FOUR air traffic controllers have been suspended at an Italian airport after it emerged they had been sleeping while on duty.

The group, based at Milan's Linate airport, scene of a disaster in 2001 when 118 people were killed after a passenger jet collided with a private plane, were suspended after an internal investigation.


Officials at Italy's national Agency of Air Traffic Controllers launched an inquiry after being tipped off about the incident.

It discovered that pilots who had been due to land in the early hours of the morning had been met with silence when radioing the tower.

Controllers at nearby airports, who were monitoring communications, stepped into handle the flights while calls were made to Linate to wake up the dozing controllers.

In a statement the agency confirmed that four controllers, including a shift manager, had been suspended for failing to "respect night shift duties".

The statement added that at no time was any plane in danger as there was a back up system, adding the agency had "full faith in its air traffic controllers whose professionalism and preparation was recognised the world over".

It is not the first time that air traffic controllers at Linate airport - used by British Airways and the budget airline Easyjet - have been at the centre of controversy.

In an investigation seven years ago it emerged that controllers had skipped work to play football while colleagues covered for them.

During that six-month period, there were 45 near misses in the skies above the airport, although officials denied the absenteeism was to blame.

In 2004 a Milan court found four people guilty over the 2001 disaster including the airport director and an air-traffic controller who were both sentenced to eight years in prison.

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1661802007

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is this more a case of potential criminal negligence, or a sign that duty hours and fatigue management programs are inadequate? We refer to our previous post talking of a just culture. Does this happen more than it is reported, of course it does!

Everyone should report for duty in an appropriate state of health to be able to perform those duties; but was does that mean? Most Air Traffic Controllers we know say that night shift (and early starts) are just part of the job and you "just deal with it". The strange thing about fatigue is that when you are suffering from it you are less able to judge that you are fatigued and thus more than likely will report for duty in an inappropriate state. If you realise this at 2.30am, do you say you need relief, or soldier on and try and stay awake?

Largely across the globe fatigue has bee ignored; or has been self managed at work, by sleeping at or under consoles, waking up to respond to co-ordination or aircraft, then continuing snoozing as if nothing happened. In many parts of the globe night shift operations are insignificant; one or two aeroplanes a night over the entire 6-10 hour shift. Hardly a stimulated environment!

This is not true in many locations, night time operations can be busier than day time operations; for example the gulf states or West Asian nations have many transiting aircraft at night as aircraft leaving Europe for East Asia etc. hit that part of the globe in the dead of night. Generally speaking in these locations staffing levels and stimuli are as adequate as during the day and thus the work environment is less conducive for snoozing. Also the full staffing complement means that there are 'normal' breaks and rest periods away from the consoles; unlike single manned positions where the stimuli is low.

Many ANSPs reduce night time staffing to levels up to 1/10th of day time staffing; this primarily is based on lack of traffic, complexities and workload. But what does that mean for the staff attending night shift operations? A long, tedious night where staying awake is the biggest challenge and next to impossible due to the lack of stimuli.

We've all heard stories of people asleep at night, do you have one, please comment.

I remember a story of the sleeping freighter pilot in the middle of nowhere about 3 in the morning at FL220 with an open mic, snoring could be heard over the air-ground frequency.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

"JUST" CULTURE

We note the recent decision in a Swiss court regarding the Uberlingen mid-air collision of 2002 and reproduce the words from the IFATCA press release issued in response to the decision.


MEDIA Release-----------------------------------------------------------

The district court in Bülach, Switzerland, has found four middle managers of Skyguide guilty in the case surrounding the Uberlingen mid-air collision of 2002. The same court has acquitted four others, including air traffic controllers and technicians.

That the court has gone beyond the front-line operators represents a new development from the legal aftermath of recent ATC-related accidents (we think of Brazil, for example). It is encouraging to note that accountability in a complex socio- technical system is expected at all organizational levels, not just at the sharp end.

We continue to be troubled, however, by criminalization of so-called human errors, whomever these errors may be attributed to. Whether those accused are controllers, technicians, managers, or directors legal pressures and criminalization hamper the free-flow and exchange of safety-related information across all organizational levels within a strong safety culture.

IFATCA believes that all personnel should be held accountable for their decisions and actions in a safety-critical system; however, experience has shown that criminal prosecution makes no contribution to improving system safety. IFATCA is signatory to the October 2006 joint resolution on the detriment to aviation safety of the “criminalization of error” issued by the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF), the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO), the Royal Aeronautical Society in England (RAeS) and the Academie Nationale de L’Air et de L’Espace (ANAE) in France. We repeat our call for all stakeholders to recognize the valuable contribution a just culture environment will make to aviation safety.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is very important that pilots and ATCs require a "JUST CULTURE"; in every accident or incident there is a natural tendency to seek out the reasons why it occurred. In fact from a systemic view point it is required.

Unfortunately human nature, particularly involving loss of life, in searching for the reasons of why something went wrong the quick concept is to proportion blame; normally to the humans involved in the process. This is particularly true in aviation; probably more so than in any other industry, with the exception of massive accidents like Chernobyl nuclear accident or the Bhopal tragedy.

In an aviation accident, normally what happens it the "air traffic controller" made an error which led to the events; particularly so when it involves mid-air collisions.

The person who was at the console at the time (or the previous controller) made an error; but is that the same thing as being negligent, or worse criminally negligent?

Whilst the controller directly involved in the Uberlingen accident was never charged, I wonder if he lived longer (he was murdered by a family member of a victim of the collision) whether he would have been.

Of interest in this case is that 'back office' decision makers were charged, because the accident happened during the night where single staffing was prominent, where the system and back-up systems were in a state of degradation (not functioning correctly). They have been held accountable for decisions which may have been allowed to occur without the appropriate safety assessment prior to the event.

I wonder if this accident was two buses, involving the same level of loss of life, whether people from the roads authority would have been charged for approving road works on the highway?

Human errors will always occur, "to err is human", the air traffic system is designed around systemic barriers for error prevention and error detection; modern systems advise the controller when conflicts are about to or are occurring. But at times of degradation these sometimes do not work; these systems very much rely on the use of radar surveillance; so over the majority of the worlds skies no collision detection system exists.

TCAS (ACAS - Airborne Collision Avoidance System) is the 'ultimate fallback' to controller or ATS systemic error; but TCAS relies on the correct application from the pilot view point (which was a significant factor in this case). TCAS uses the information from onboard equipment of the other aircraft in the vicinity; it may 'over react' at times and suggest avoiding action when a separation standard actually exists. If this reaction occurs due to false data (e.g. faulty height read-out) from the other aircraft then TCAS can make a disastrous avoiding action decision.

Every-time there has been a significant error in aviation, the media in particular looks for the person(s) to blame. In recent times controllers from Switzerland, Japan, Brazil and Kenya have all been prosecuted for making an error; not that the error itself was negligent or deliberate, but because of the consequence of that error.

A key advantage of a JUST CULTURE is accurate reporting for investigation and thus development of improved error prevention strategies; where a JUST CULTURE does not exist, errors are hidden or covered up to possibly prevent the retribution of the system. Controllers making mistakes are normal, systems catching the mistakes is required.

A "JUST CULTURE" would treat every like type error in the same manner, regardless of the consequence; despite the emotions involved.