Sydney Airport runway restrictions add to flight delays

Staff shortages plaguing much of the aviation industry have not spared air traffic control, with the service forced to take drastic action in response.

Runway restrictions at Australia’s biggest gateway, Sydney Airport, contributed to the worst ever month for flight delays, with almost one in every two flights running late in July.

On 21 of the 31-days of the month, some level of restrictions were applied by air traffic control, such as a reduction in the number of departures or arrivals in an hour, or the partial closure of airspace.

An Airservices Australia spokesman attributed the service disruptions to “the impacts of Covid and flu, leading to short notice, unplanned absences of staff”.

As a result, flights into Sydney landed on time in just 50.1 per cent of cases, and only 48.2 per cent of departures took off as scheduled throughout the month.

With 40 per cent of flights in Australia originating from or landing in Sydney, the airport’s woes had a knock-on effect to the rest of the country, dragging on-time performance to new lows.

Across all airports and airlines, 55 per cent of flights landed within 15-minutes of schedule and 54 per cent departed on time in July.

The control tower at Sydney Airport. Picture: Peter Rae/AAP Image

The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics confirmed the results were the worst since records began in 2003.

Airservices denied there was a chronic shortage of staff within air traffic control, saying the level of interruption taking place was “not significant”.

“We have sufficient air traffic controllers to fill our shifts in Sydney and across our network,” said the Airservices spokesman.

“We need about 800 air traffic controllers to fully staff the system, and we have more than 900 air traffic controllers on staff.”

President of Civil Air, Tom McRobert, said that may be the case, but there continued to be insufficient numbers of trained staff for particular roles.

The problem had been exacerbated by an early retirement scheme during Covid that saw 130 experienced controllers depart, or more than 10 per cent of the workforce.

Mr McRobert said that had left holes in some areas, including Sydney, where remaining air traffic controllers had logged an extraordinary 542-hours of overtime over ten-days in June.

“The rapid increase in air traffic wasn’t projected well enough and when you have people calling in sick for effectively a whole week, that’s proving really problematic,” Mr McRobert said.

“There are some areas where we haven’t cross-trained enough people, which means you can’t take someone from one area and put them somewhere else.”

Mr McRobert stressed that staff shortages would not compromise air safety, only the efficiency of the aviation industry, which generally meant delayed flights.

“When there is not enough staff to cover for breaks, we give the airlines a heads up we’re stopping all movements for half an hour,” he said.

“We lose efficiency so that’s when the airlines cop it, but safety is never compromised.”