Airport plan angers pilots and firemen

Press, 24 October 1984, Page 1

Airport plan angers pilots and firemen

< Wellington reporter and NZPA The Public Service Association will make urgent submissions to the Government on proposals to cut Ministry of Transport airport rescue services.

The association’s president, Mr Colin Hicks, expressed “grave concern” yesterday, about recommendations outlined in reports released on Monday. The staff affected by the proposed : cuts were P.S.A. members, he said. “Their careers in the Public Service are now in jeopardy and their lives are bound to be drastically affected by these proposals.” Given this, Mr Hicks said, it was “deplorable” that the recommendations had been offered without first consulting the P.S.A. Pilots and airport rescue firemen yesterday condemned the reports on airport rescue services as a blatant cost-cutting exercise. Both groups questioned the validity of the recommendations, and the qualification of the author, Mr Russell Smith, . to make them. The angry reaction came from the president of the Airline Pilots’ Association, Captain lan MacAulay, and the airport rescue firemen’s delegate , to the Public Service . Association, Mr Bob Halligan. Captain MacAulay said that pilots were particularly

concerned, about downgrading of air traffic control and light services at domestic airports. Already, Friendship pilots were worried about the removal of some services from provincial airports, Captain MacAulay said. A case was Westport where no flight service worked on Sundays.

“We have been worried for some time that a Friendship with passengers could have an accident in a corner of the airfield, and nobody would know anything about -it until the aircraft was found to be missing,” he said. The report recommends the removal of flight services from 10 domestic airports. Rescue firemen met in Auckland yesterday to discuss the report, and a national meeting has been called in Wellington tomorrow.

Scrapping of the service would put 219 out of work, including 30 at Auckland Airport. Mr Halligan said that while Mr Smith used statistics to show there was little likelihood of an airliner crash at Auckland Airport for more than : 100 years, he

“conveniently” ignored five fatal accidents there because no fare-paying passengers were carried. Captain MacAulay said that it was all very well to talk, about fewer airport accidents nowadays, but airliners today carried 50 times more fuel and 10 times as many passengers as they did when the International Civil Aviation Organisation recommendations were framed. “If you want an example of how horrific an airport accident can be, you have only to go back a few years to Tenerife (the world’s worst airliner crash),” he said. Nelson Airport’s senior rescue fire officer, Mr Ray King, said that the report mentioned only one incident that had happened at Nelson Airport in 12 years. This involved a Bristol Freighter which lost a wheel while

taxi-ing on the runway about three years ago. The report failed to mention a helicopter that collapsed on landing last year and the dozens of potential accidents, Mr King said. This year the service stood by for two landings by twin-engined Cessnas with suspected undercarriage faults, a fault in the nosewheel of a Friendship, another twin-engined Cessna with one engine shut down, four cases of roughly running motors in single-en-gined aircraft, bird strikes on aircraft, and heavy landings caused by ’ crosswinds, he said. Apart from that, the service put out airport grass fires, other fires which occurred in the airport surrounds, such as car engine fires, and petrol leakages from cars. The Nelson service employs seven people, although one man has just .transferred to Woodbourne, who run two machines. Proposals for drastic changes to airport rescue services should . undergo widespread study before any decisions are taken, according to the former Minister of. Transport, Mr Gair. He welcomed’the decision to release the consultant’s report, and said that the proposals should go to a Parliamentary select committee.