Snowtown Airport on time

Ah ha. That explains it. Makes sense.

Ant, away from the airport, traffic is controlled from two centres run from Melb and Brisb. At the airport, the towers are responsible for traffic in the region of the airport. Planes are passed from one controller to another as they travel through regions.

There’s been a shortage of controllers in Australia for quite a while, months if not years, and CASA have been recruiting. That said, the union has been urging them to take their breaks instead of working through because CASA has been pushing the line they don’t need as many controllers as they used to, whereas the union say that is because they are worked like dogs. Looks like you got caught in a bit of employer-employee gamesmanship when the local controller took the break he is entitled to.

I remember a few years back, they said that Canberra’s air control was being run from Sydney. Yet, on that film of the dodgey Russian aeroplane almost not taking off from Canberra airport, it became very evident that the film was being taken from the control tower. So not quite sure what the story is with our air control?

I feel the the need to comment on this.

I fly fortnightly – and usually, while the service at Canberra Aiport is rude and staff often unhelpful and unfriendly (I know, the airlines problem, not CIA’s) it wasn’t particularly bad, until today, when I was left on the tarmac in Melbourne, unable to take off because when we were due to land in Canberra, the person who was operating the Air Control Tower needed a tea break and they simply did not have enough staff members to cover the break.

Urm…Excuse me? Not happy.

In saying that – I would rather that we land safely with someone in Air Control watching us and ensuring that we do exactly that, rather than us just landing.

The taxi thing is embarassing. If we have interstaters coming in for meetings etc, I warn them about the morning/afternoon peak hour lock-up. For very important morning arrivals, some are actually coming in the night before and staying at a hotel, especially if they’ve been burned previously. Some from Sydney are opting to drive down now, rather than fly.
It’ll get worse when the roadworks start in earnest. Right now the lock-up drains away after a few hours, but the roadworks will see delays spreading out all day (and night).

Why doesn’t somebody do a survey on waiting times for taxis at different airports? Great the planes arrive on time. Not so great spending as much time in the taxi line as you spent in the air.

Yet Canberra Times is reporting today that CIA has the worst service levels in the country….

On time performance is only carried out on routes where there is competition…. next survey will include CBR-SYD..

There is no CBR-PER figures(only QF), and there’ll be no CBR-OOL figures(only VJ)… but wait for news on competition to the Gold Coast…

Most of the QF CBR-SYD delays are due to Air tarffic, and alot of storm weather in SYD.. storms equal no ground staff on tarmac..

I do the Canb to Syd route quite regularly on QANTAS and have rarely had any major delays. Fog in winter does throw things out a bit, but if you get out before 7am you’re usually fine.