Brisbane Airport ATC Nightmare

The primary problems though revolve around the arrangement of taxiways, facilities and the main 3500m runway. As there is no provision for sectionalised taxiway lighting, controllers cannot give assistance to aircraft by directing them via the use of taxiway lights. Indeed, the distance from the international terminal to the end of runway 19 will be just over seven kilometres. Taxying a fully laden 747 this far on a hot day should do wonders for its undercarriage and tyres! Despite the Taj Mahal atmosphere of the 20 gate position domestic terminal, the international terminal will remain in its existing archaic structure which is better known locally as the ‘tin shed’!

Additionally, the inner parallel taxiway abeam of 01/19 has a crucial segment missing (as a last-minute cost saving exercise) resulting in aircraft having to merge into a single taxiway to gain the end of either 01, from the domestic terminal, or to taxi onwards to the international terminal following an 01 arrival If a more common 19 arrival is performed then the inbound aircraft will still have to taxi the remaining length of the runway to avoid the taxiway bottleneck if surface traffic is at a high level and the taxiway is consequently occupied by a number of jets. This could certainly lead to delays in the pattern as the taxi speed of a wide bodied aircraft is strictly limited. Indeed, it is not difficult to envisage 747s nose to nose on this bottleneck and in some cases held up for great periods by peak hour domestic jet flights which would obstruct transit through the area.

Another point is that from the tower, the threshold of runway 14 is some four kilometres distant. In foggy conditions, which are frequent due to the proximity of mangroves in this area, light aircraft cannot be visually identified and so there will be no capability to detect what is actually going on on the surface movement area.

CAOOAA thus feels that the duty surface movement controller will probably have the most onerous and complex job of its type in Australia. Originally, there was to be a special SMCA tower built at the end of the middle finger. This was not proceeded with because Brisbane was designated to receive surface movement radar, however this has not been provided and a situation where the worst of both worlds rules now exists. The great fear of many of the controllers is that it will take only marginal weather conditions to effectively shut down the airport due to the lack of the surface movement controller being able to know precisely where ‘his’ aircraft are. As the world’s greatest air disaster took place on the ground (Teneriffe), it is worth taking this point seriously, particularly in view of the number of aircraft that will be ‘bottlenecking’ at the end of 19 due to lack of taxiways, that will be crossing 01/19 continually and forced to taxi via the active runway again due to the non-completion of a small segment of the inboard western taxiway.

Additionally, the GA admin and maintenance bases, the DTC hangars, the fire crew and the Ansett and Australian maintenance facilities are all located on the other side of the airport from the giant terminal. This sounds logical till you realise that there is no parallel taxiway on that side of the main runway which means that aircraft and vehicles from this area will forever be queuing to cross the primary active runway to gain access to other parts of the airfield.

There is also a magnificent operations and. briefing room in the Operations Centre at the base of the tower. Again the only problem is that it is some 25 kilometres from the GA hangar area requiring a round trip by car of over an hour.

While mentioning the tyranny of distance, it is also worth noting that international passengers will also have to endure at least a 20 minute bus ride to make their domestic connections. Indeed, many might well wonder if they really did land at the same airport when they begin to compare the different terminals!

Ori the credit side, the new airport will provide Brisbane with more than adequate theoretical capacity for decades to come. Complementing. the primary three and a half kilometre long runway (capable of taking aircraft of over 450 tonnes) is a 1640m GA and commuter propjet runway that does not physically intrude upon the primary runway thus allowing true operational flexibility. Further major runway construction can take place on the western side of the existing terminal which should see Brisbane satisfactorily catered for till at least the middle of the next century.