Refusing to accept the responsibility of safety of aircraft in the airspace, the air traffic controllers (ATCs) in the city have said that they will not go to the courts to face criminal prosecutions in case of any accidents. The message was conveyed to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) administration at a meeting held on Wednesday. “Due to heavy density of air traffic in the Karachi west sector, it is beyond a single controller’s capacity to manage 45 to 50 aircraft at a time on a single frequency for up to 10 continuous hours in front of the radar scope without any rest,” the controllers said.
At present, all air traffic operators are wearing black bands while working and have also stopped working extra hours. Since January 27, the airlines of the country have suffered combined losses of 10,010 nautical miles (nm) on account of extra track miles, with the Airblue losing 4,088 nm and the Shaheen Air 5,754 nm during the 14-day period. Due to the non-cooperation movement of ATCs, the total loss to the aircraft operators per day comes to around 1,418 nm while the operating cost for the Airbus 320 (medium-type aircraft) is $53 per minute.
At the meeting, the ATCs stated that the issues of increasing density of traffic in the airspace and safety were also highlighted by former CAA Deputy Director General Riazul Haq in his working paper in 2010. However, no extra favours are provided to the air operators despite the heavy workload and deteriorating surveillance conditions like that the Pasni radar is out of service for the past five days.
It is worth mentioning that total track shortening per day favoured by ATCs to all airlines is 715 nm excluding the holding in air or ground, while it does not include flights operated from Lahore towards China, Delhi, Afghanistan and northern areas of the country through ATR aircrafts.
