Controllers’ action will delay travel

Press, 25 October 1985, Page 4

Controllers’ action will delay travel

PA Wellington Air traffic controllers’ restrictions on handling aircraft would result in some delays to travellers, said the Minister of Civil Aviation, Mr Prebble, yesterday. But the decision was entirely understood and accepted, he said. Terminal radar controllers, who handle approaches and departures up to 90km out, will now operate a maximum of only six aircraft. Area radar controllers, responsible for aircraft within 320 km, have limited their work-load to eight aircraft. Mr Prebble said he had received a telegram from the Air Traffic Controllers’ Association informing him of the move for safety reasons.

“At present it is not possible to say precisely what effect the procedures will

have on the travelling public,” he said, answering a question in Parliament. But the Civil Aviation Division of the Ministry of Transport had instructed all traffic control units to give preference to air transport m controlled air space at the expense of purely private recreational flying. “In this way every effort will be made to reduce adverse effects on the travelling public,” Mr Prebble said. He accepted that some delays were inevitable. The Opposition spokesman on civil aviation, Mr Winston Peters, said airport radar facilities had failed on 97 occasions in the last 12 months. That was proof of a need for action now, he said. Any undue delay in the programme to overhaul the air traffic control system would result in increased air accidents and deaths.

The Ministry had announced plans to spend $B6 million on an overhaul programme over the next 10 to 15 years, he said. Mr Peters called on Mr Prebble to convene a meeting of all parties urgently to set new priorities and a four-year to five-year timetable for radar overhaul and replacement. The Association’s president, Mr Tony Chapman, said the measures were designed to flatten out peaks in the number of aircraft being dealt with. Aircraft would spend longer circling airfields before being permitted to land. The Ministry’s deputy director of flight standards, Mr Doug Buchan, said the action by air traffic controllers would not affect safety.

Procedural control was an internationally acceptable method of controlling aircraft, he said.