The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has launched an investigation after two planes nearly collided on the tarmac at Sydney Airport early yesterday.
A flight attendant was injured on board a Jetstar plane that had to brake sharply to avoid an empty Qatar aircraft that was being towed. The near miss capped several days of disruption and delays at SYD which airlines are attributing to a shortage of air traffic controllers.
The ATSB will collect data from both aircraft and air traffic control and interview flight crew, ground staff and air traffic controllers on duty.
It has asked anyone with video footage of the incident to submit it via a witness form on its website.
On Sat, the airport has warned of delays for about 150 flights. Airservices Australia, which manages the airspace, introduced reduced traffic movements due to rostering issues. An Airservices spokesperson at the weekend told the ABC that flow management measures may cause ‘some disruptions to airline scheduling and it is working with airlines to reduce delays and the impact on passenger travel as much as possible’.
. . . Unacceptable
Airservices Australia says it is enhancing its training pipeline to add further controllers to improve roster depth. Travellers also experienced delays last week, and a transtasman airline lobby group warned that long-standing problems with air traffic control were responsible for unacceptable delays. “Australia’s aviation network cannot continue to grind to a halt because Airservices Australia cannot adequately staff its air traffic control facilities,’’ says Stephen Beckett, ceo of Airlines for Australia and New Zealand.
