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Airservices Australia has apologised for delays at Sydney Airport due to staff shortages, saying it is working to increase employee numbers.
As reported in The Australian, around a dozen flights were cancelled and others delayed by 15 minutes to more than an hour in Sydney on Thursday, with Airservices also using ground delays at other airports to pump the brakes on arrivals and departures at Kingsford Smith Airport.
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“Airservices has briefed airlines on the need for air traffic controllers to implement spacing intervals for aircraft arriving and departing Sydney today to safely manage operations while a number of our local staff are on short-notice sick and carers leave, some of whom have been covered through our resilience measures,” a spokesperson said.
“We will keep delays to a minimum and apologise for any impact to our customers and the travelling public.
“Airservices is continuing to recruit to ensure we have additional staff available as an on-call capability to cover these kinds of short notice absences. We plan to have this resilience level more broadly available during the course of 2026.”
Speaking to The Australian, Stephen Beckett, chief executive of Airlines for Australia and New Zealand, said his own flights have been among those disrupted, and called on Airservices to better address the issue.
“It’s enormously frustrating, and we’re seeing delays right across the network because Airservices can’t staff the tower,” he said.
“This is playing havoc with people’s plans for holidays, to go to events, weddings, funerals, but also corporate and business travellers.
“We’ve got an aviation white paper that is solely focused on improving the services of airlines and the aviation industry for Australian consumers. We ask that Airservices Australia step up and find a solution to what is now an ongoing problem.”
According to the Airservices spokesperson, the air traffic management provider is “focused on active recruitment, training and cross-skilling to improve service outcomes for our customers and partners as we move into 2026”.
“As reported in the December Australian Aviation Network Overview, strengthening workforce capacity remained our core focus throughout 2025, with 91 additional air traffic controllers endorsed over the last 12 months, exceeding the target of 85,” they said.
“Air traffic service variation hours in December were 74 per cent lower than last year, and Airservices Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) attribution to total network delays remained low at 0.2 per cent.
“Despite our heightened focus on holiday resilience, unplanned absences resulted in some ad-hoc flow restrictions and service variations around Perth, Brisbane and Sydney.”
Airservices chief executive Rob Sharp said last year that staffing had returned to pre-COVID-19 levels, but was still “not where [Airservices] wanted it”.
