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AirAsia incident lays bare unresolved woes plaguing ATC
For air traffic control (ATC) official Dio Resnu Aditya, dealing with a lack of personnel has become a day-to-day challenge
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or air traffic control (ATC) official Dio Resnu Aditya, dealing with a lack of personnel has become a day-to-day challenge.
Stationed at Supadio International Airport in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, after being recruited in 2012, Dio and his colleagues have to cope with an exceptionally heavy workload.
'When someone's absent, it's common to see two ATC officials handling duties that are supposed to be done by four. An official may also work for four consecutive hours without a proper break for similar reasons,' he revealed.
Despite the sharp growth in Indonesia's airline industry over the last decade, ATC officials across the nation have struggled with arduous workloads and an uncomfortable working atmosphere as a result of a shortage of staff to direct aircraft to avoid collisions.
Last year, the Transportation Ministry estimated that Indonesia would need more than 800 additional ATC professionals to support the existing 1,200 officials providing air navigation services for the country's 237 airports.
Despite their vital role in maintaining air safety, and unlike pilots or cabin crew, ATC officials received scant public attention until AirAsia flight QZ8501 crashed into the sea off Central Kalimantan en route to Singapore from Surabaya, East Java, on Dec. 28. All 162 people on board have either been confirmed or are presumed dead.
ATC at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport has been in the spotlight following revelations of its refusal, because of heavy air traffic, to immediately grant a request from the pilot of the ill-fated plane to climb higher to avoid a threatening storm.
According to state navigation operator AirNav Indonesia, ATC took around three minutes to coordinate the request with its Singaporean counterparts before allowing AirAsia to ascend.
However, by that point, ATC could no longer establish contact with the aircraft. ATC officials have claimed that such coordination is not uncommon for international flights.
The cause of the crash remains unknown ' the flight data recorder was not retrieved by searchers until Monday ' and experts have criticized as too hasty speculation that the ATC bears some responsibility for the incident.
However, analysts are almost unanimous in their agreement that Indonesia's air navigation system needs immediate reform.
With air travel becoming more and more affordable over the past decade, Indonesia posted an average of 13.8 and 19.3 percent growth in domestic and international passenger numbers, respectively, between 2009 and 2013, according to the Transportation Ministry.
However, the rapid increase has come amid a lack of well-equipped domestic airports, trained professionals and navigation infrastructure.
Aviation observer Aminarno Budi Pradana said the shortage of ATC personnel had inevitably affected the quality of air-navigation services in Indonesia, whose airline industry served over 53 million domestic passengers last year.
'The public discussion on human resources [for air navigation] must consider not only the number of ATC personnel, but also their competence, training and diversity of skills,' said Aminarno, who is also a veteran air navigation instructor at the Indonesian State Aviation School (STPI) in Curug, Banten.
'With the limited number of personnel, many ATC officials complain that it is very difficult for them to receive advanced training, let alone to take days off.'
Although the government established AirNav in 2013 to take over the management of air navigation services from state airport operators PT Angkasa Pura (AP) I and II, Aminarno argued that the new agency did not yet constitute a comprehensive solution.
'Referring to the level of our air traffic density, it is necessary for the authorities to ease the burden on ATC officials by, for instance, providing [computer-assisted] tools to help them handle arrival and departure management or detect aircraft movement on the ground at night and during bad weather,' he said.
The slow increase in the number of ATC professionals may partly stem from the limited supply.
There are only four training institutions that are licensed to provide air navigation courses ' the STPI, plus the Transportation Ministry's semi-military aviation schools in Surabaya, Medan and Makassar.
The STPI's head of aviation safety, Djoko Jatmoko, said that although the school's navigation program attracted around 1,000 applicants every year, it could only admit up to 90 new students annually because of its limited facilities.
AirNav standards and safety director Wisnu Darjono acknowledged the shortage in staff, but insisted that the company would never compromise the safety of air travel.
He claimed that the company currently needed at least another 250 ATC professionals to support its existing 1,200 staff stationed at 193 airports.
He added that the company's newly upgraded Emergency-Jakarta Automated Air Traffic System (E-JAATS) and the MATSC (Makassar Air Traffic Service Center) could help improve the handling of more than 10,000 aircraft movements per day.
As for personnel fatigue, Wisnu said that the company required its on-duty ATC officials to take a 45-minute break every two hours to maintain their concentration, although no international rule stipulates such a practice.
'Referring to the international standard, our on-duty officials are allowed to take a break whenever they are tired. However, the break must be taken after working for two consecutive hours,' he said.
