The government body for air traffic control is creating a “huge risk to public safety” by pursuing a program of severe job cuts, according to leaked documents from its own employees.
Airservices Australia, which oversees airspace management, communications and aviation firefighting, has shed more than 700 staff since May in a streamlining process known as Accelerate.
One executive inside the organisation told the ABC it was “only a matter of time before we have a major aviation incident”. Leaked emails between senior managers reportedly called the Accelerate program “sheer lunacy” with a “cavalier attitude [that is] absolutely appalling”.
“The Accelerate program is doing everything backwards and rushing to make changes without careful forethought,” an angry email sparked by wild weather and delays at Melbourne airport over Christmas reportedly said. “As a result it is putting ... the travelling public at significant risk.”
Airservices has described Accelerate as a “short-term program” to make the organisation “leaner” and “more agile”. It said the cuts targeted backroom staff in administration and technical support, and frontline jobs in control and firefighting were “quarantined” from the changes.
But Ben Morgan, the executive director of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (Aopa), said the Accelerate program was “gutting the organisation of capability and putting the public at risk”.
“We’re seeing the early warning signs,” he said. “We’re not talking about a government department that handles paper. The people who are physically doing their job consider there to be a genuine, serious threat to the safety of the flying public.”
Rupert Evans, the deputy national president of the Community and Public Sector Union, said Accelerate seemed to be “cutting costs no matter what”.
“[Airservices] continues to insist that no frontline capacity has been lost through this process but our members have told us that technical and other specialist roles can’t be cut without compromising the organisation’s core functions,” he said.
“A huge number of staff with specialist knowledge have been cut ... and those staff who remain are working valiantly but struggling to cope with the void that’s created.”
Senator Nick Xenophon and Aopa have called for the program to be stopped and for an independent investigation into Airservices’ safety procedures.
“I don’t believe at this stage that passengers boarding aircraft have a reason to be fearful or concerned but now is the time to thoroughly investigate before it goes too far”, Morgan said.
The Airservices chief executive, Jason Harfield, denied there was any threat to safety. “Any suggestion that Airservices is compromising on safety is totally incorrect and refused,” he said in a statement. “There is no risk to the travelling public ... There has been extensive union and employee consultation.”
Airservices plans to complete the Accelerate program by June 2017, with earmarked savings of $150m. In 2016 the body recorded a $10m loss, its first deficit in nearly 20 years. Harfield told the Australian the cuts would return a profit of $50m by 2018.
