Pilots fear collisions as staffing crisis leaves Australian control towers empty

Concerns among pilots about a possible mid-air collision are spilling over in Australia as a shortage of air traffic controllers leaves airport towers unmanned, forcing passenger jets to fend for themselves.

There are currently no overnight air traffic control services at Darwin, a northern gateway for carriers including Qantas Airways Ltd. and Virgin Australia. Schedules show that at around midnight almost every day, more than a dozen flights have to arrive or depart with almost no guidance from the ground.

On Australia’s northeast coast, the airport at Townsville - a popular jumping off point for the Great Barrier Reef - doesn’t staff its control tower at weekends. Almost 50 commercial services have to coordinate their own landings or takeoffs on Sunday alone.

The labor crisis on the ground is adding risk in the air during the post-Covid travel boom, with flight crews taking on the task of distancing their planes from other air traffic - a responsibility that ordinarily lies with air traffic controllers. Pilots say landing without direction from a tower removes an important layer of security at a critical period of the flight. Concerned crews are blowing the whistle after a surge in passenger traffic. Airlines have scheduled 866 flights into Darwin this month, the most this year, up from a Covid-era low of 171 in May 2020, according to Cirium data. Runway construction work at the airport that restricts plane movements is making landing and taking off without help even more complicated, pilots say.

In a statement, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority said it’s “satisfied that the arrangements between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. are safe for the anticipated traffic mix” at Darwin. The regulator said it’s working with the defence department, which is responsible for air traffic control at Darwin, to “support a return to the previous service levels.” The defence department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Airservices Australia, the government agency that manages airspace, said “rosters are tight in some areas” but “safety is never compromised.” The organization has recruited and trained 100 new air traffic controllers since 2020 and more than 70 others will join in the 2025 fiscal year, it said.

Safety concerns among air traffic controllers themselves in Sydney - Australia’s main aviation gateway - emerged early last year when staff submitted at least 15 confidential reports to the transport safety investigator. Some warned that an accident was almost inevitable unless the manpower deficit was addressed. The Australian Airline Pilots’ Association was so concerned that it issued a safety bulletin on the matter. The body warned there’s a higher risk of a mid-air collision in areas of uncontrolled airspace because not all aircraft are equipped with crash-avoidance systems. The alert was distributed to professional pilot bodies worldwide. It’s not as if government bodies aren’t aware of long-standing concerns among pilots and air traffic controllers.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau in March 2023 published an anonymous confidential submission, apparently from an air traffic controller, which highlighted a lack of understanding among controllers and flight crews about what to do in uncontrolled airspace. The situation was “an accident waiting to happen,” the person said.