Australian ATC Alternatives

Recently VHF radio coverage has been improved by the introduction of CAA Satellite based communications. Full radar coverage along the east coast is still two to five years away and probably never for the entire continent, Satellite navigation posisions remote to Control Centres by Mode S may eventually make ground based radar obsolete. (Automatic Dependent Surveillance). For the time being lack of these two items removes a great deal of the flexibility from our ATC system.

The fundamental difference, however, may lie with our rule makers and the way in which they choose to interpret ICAO recommended practices.

All of the Special Rules Areas. Special Rules Zones and Miltary Air Traffic Zones could exist in Australia. These strangely named areas exist to regulate the types of traffic able to use the airports within them, MATZ are not controlled airspace in the sense that we know it, they are more like a military AFIZ. That is one reason they can be transited with such ease. Unlike the Europeans we have so much airspace that we can afford to be generous in our use of it. Witness the vastness of some RAAF R Areas.

But on the plus side we do not restrict the use of any of it to specifically licensed users. A VFR pilot, without sophisticated navaids can, after filing a flight plan and obtaining a clearance, penetrate any Australian civil or military controlled airspace sec- for Note: that many R Areas are not controlled by RAAF ATC. even though the Operating Authority may be MIL. The decision on how to divide our airspace and what to call it is made by the RAAF and the CAA Safety Regulation Branch. The old Flying Ops. or Flight Standards.

Military Zones

The flexibility of the UK MATZ system relies heavily on the universal availability of radar. Every military base has its own radar approach control unit. The Lower Airspace Radar Service LARS) is provided by these military ATC units, Australia by comparison has few military air bases, most of which until recently did not have any radar. The AIP does however make provision for military ATC units to give the same Advisory and Limited Advisory services as exist in the UK. It should be recognised that the LARS is offered only if the UK military unit has the spare capacity. In other words it costs nothing to provide. This is an important concept to remember in planning our future ATS system.

Low Altitude Radar Services

A LARS service could be supplied by CAA controllers utilising new labelled display radar systems being progressively introduced. To attempt to do so with the quarter century old technology still in use in Sydney would divert too much controller time from the primary task of separation and traffic sequencing in the CTA. However with the advent of automatically identified plots complete with altitude and ground speed most of the time consuming work is done by the system. Leaving the controller free to give assistance where requested. Such a control position could be established alongside CTA controllers specifically to guard the boundaries of our busier CTR’s and TMA’s. At the same time offering radar advisories and assistance in weather avoidance to aircraft ‘OCTA’. Such a position already operates in airspace around the London TMA. The primary role of guarding the CTR/CTA boundaries justifies the expense, the information role is secondary and therefore cost free. Similarly en route controllers would be able to utilise the low level ‘picture’ available to them, but only as a secondary role, and therefore essentially cost free again. This would mean a bonus to the GA pilot in that the present rigid boundaries between controlled and uncontrolled airspaces would become blurred. Cutting the corner of a CTR would become easy because the controller you would be talking to would be sitting next to the Approach controller. The important concept to keep in mind is that the CAA could provide this service, in busy terminal areas, at very little cost, as the controller would also have other duties, already justifying his existence. The provision of a dedicated radar based traffic information service ‘OCTA’, similar to the present non radar service, would be very expensive. The industry would have to ask who would pay for such a service. The airlines hardly use the present OCTA traffic information service so the cost burden would inevitably fall on the GA community. The CAA is presently spending $18 million, not including the building requirements, on equipping its Flight Service units with computerised aircraft display systems. (FSADS) The costs of this are presently part of the overall Air Traffic Services budget. However, as the aim of the CAA is to eventually identify each of its profit and loss making areas, this cost will in the end be borne by the users, General Aviation. The UK and Europe have no equivalent organisation similar to our Flight Service. All services to aircraft OCTA, or what is better described as ‘off airways’ are provided by air traffic controllers who have other primary tasks to perform.

Flow Management and SAR

We have practiced what the rest of the world now calls en route holding for twenty years. Constant flow management through speed control is used at our major airports to smooth the arriving stream of traffic. Unfortunately it has its limitations and we often have to resort to holding patterns. The only solution to this problem, here and in Europe, is more runways. The bottlenecks are caused mainly by the airlines scheduling too many flights for the available runway capacity. They are not ATC delays but delays caused by airline scheduling.

Australia also has very effective flight monitoring rules. They are tailored to the vastness of our country, compared with Europe. While they may at times seem a nuisance and a limitation on your personal freedom, they are designed to minimise the area to be searched should you come to grief, so reducing the cost to the community of finding you. These rules, and our practice of having a Search Mission Coordinator on duty full time, otherwise known by the title on his other hat, as the SOC, mean that many potential SAR incidents are solved before they become tragedies. Another cost saving for the public purse.

The future of the CAP?. s Operational Control Service, which is responsible for Search and Rescue, may be in doubt following the recent Terrell report into the provision of Operational Control. It will be a pity if our superior SAR service is compromised by changes to the Operational Control Service.

The Future

So far I have tried to show that it is mainly our geographic differences that have created different systems, but lack of equipment and a different regulatory philosophy have played a major role also. We are fortunate that, unlike the Europeans, we are one country on one continent. Our ATC system is the better for that. We have an integrated system with optimum positioning of Control Centres and navigational aids. We all speak the same language, use the same procedures, and have only one regulatory authority. In this respect we are more like the United States than Europe.

We have lagged behind in the provision of modern control facilities but increasingly they will be coming on line over the next few years. With the changeover from a procedures based ATC system to a radar based system, it is time that we reviewed our Air Traffic Services and regulatory philosophy.

For a start the Civil Aviation Regulation covering the provision of Air Traffic Control needs to be amended to allow for more flexible services to be provided to aircraft. Presently controllers must ‘prevent collisions’. It therefore follows that the controller must have control of every aircraft in his airspace. An advisory service in CTA is simply not allowed. Air Traffic Controllers can however give an advisory service OCTA, and used to until a few years ago. This was a very cost effective ser vice as the controller was also carrying out his primary role.

Our controlled airspaceis designed around the climb and descent procedures of RPT jet aircraft. It is not designed around ATC problem areas, indeed the CTA steps help create most of the problem areas and can result in non jet aircraft holding half in and half out of a CTA step.

The boundaries between controlled and uncontrolled airspace are very rigid and have even given rise to quite separate operating organisations, ATC and Flight Service. Our wake turbulence standards are very rigid, have to be applied without regard to the wind and create long delays at our major airports.

Our Standard Instrument Departures are designed to get aircraft ‘P?. onto track ‘X’ with terrain clearance and noise abatement built in. They do not take into account ATC separation problems. Brisbane Airport has four SIDs that cannot be used in IMC conditions because they do not provide separation with the ILS course!

Airspace again, does the RAAF really need all the Restricted Area it controls?

Regulations, should highly skilled controllers staff otherwise quiet airports just because an RPT 737 lands there twice a day? Is an AFIZ really needed because an F28 is about to operate?

Why is a traffic information service required above 5,000 feet?

If it is, then why is it not required below 5,000ft?

Would a simple SAR alerting service OCTA be all that the industry requires, augmented by radar advisory services along the lines I have described in the busy terminal areas?

I am sure the reader can think of many other examples. They are all a product of our safety philosophy. A safety philosophy costs money. In the past ‘The Department’ was all power ful. It tended to impose its will on the industry without regard for cost to the industry. Its costs came out of the public purse as an essential government service, and consolidated revenue claimed the charges imposed on the industry. As in all government service, empires grew and prospered, without anyone daring to ask why. Things have now changed. The CAA is self funding. It has undertaken to bring the CARs (ANRs) up to date, investigate our unique certification procedures and review Operational Control. It has made many overdue equipment replacement decisions.

– Overshadowing all of these things is the system it has inherited. Why do we do things the way we do? Who decides, for instance, that a traffic information service, employing 700 staff, is a requirement OCTA. These kinds of fundamentals affect every other decision. The assumptions on which Safety Regulation and other managers make their decisions should be questioned. Our procedures in and out of Controlled Airspace should all be overhauled to determine the proper level of risk management appropriate to the various categories of user. The cost of each service should be readily available. The CAA has recently announced a review of airspace management Australia-wide.

Few details of the scope of this review are available at the time of writing. However, if the review fails to ask Safety Regulation fundamental questions about why things must be done in a certain way, it will produce only cosmetic changes and a justification of the status quo. Anthony Brown’s observations indicate that perhaps Europe has much to teach us in this area.