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Air traffic control is essential, but people give it little thought until something goes wrong. In the past three weeks, a trio of on-the-ground near misses occurred at Sydney Airport, framed by near-persistent reports of ground delays holding up flights, and keeping passengers waiting on the tarmac.
That has put the spotlight on Airservices Australia, the government-owned but self-funding air traffic control organisation that is responsible for keeping the skies safe above Australia.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is investigating the near misses on the tarmac, two on August 9 and one on July 27, and a sense of crisis has emerged. The incidents, which happened in Sydney, have implications for Australia’s entire aviation sector.
Transport Minister Catherine King, busy with aviation consumer reform and VietJet’s plans to fly from Western Sydney International, summoned chief executive Rob Sharp this week to explain the delays and the incidents at Sydney Airport.
While the investigations are yet to conclude, no one is denying that staffing has become the No.1 challenge for Airservices: it does not have enough air traffic controllers (ATCs) to comfortably fill its shifts in Sydney.
In the short term, Sharp said Airservices would impose a rostering change for Sydney’s air traffic controls to begin in early September. The change would put staff “on call” so that if there was an absence in the control tower, management would know who was available without having to call around. King said: “I have made my expectations clear that Airservices must carefully manage the situation at Sydney for the rest of August.”
Ground delays at airports, Sydney in particular, have become a feature in recent years. The centrality of Sydney to the nation’s network means that a delay there has an outsized impact for flights to and from Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth.
The average number of delays that can be blamed on Airservices Australia has fallen nationally, by 13 per cent in fiscal year 2026, but when delays happen in Sydney, they can ripple across the network for hours.
“We have had significant holding, delays and cancellations for ages related directly to ATC,“ one commercial pilot said of the situation at Kingsford Smith. One day last week coming into Sydney, there were no delays identified, and yet “we got 40 minutes airborne holding out of nowhere”.
“Luckily, as all of us do, I had loaded extra fuel simply because it is impossible to predict what will happen into Sydney,” he said. “Lots of extra fuel carried and burnt, which all contributes to emissions.”
The Department of Transport, under which Airservices sits, remains in daily communication with it. Sharp said that for Sydney, “increasing air traffic controller supply remains our top priority”.
Eight new tower controllers have been certified in the past 18 months, Sharp said. Six controllers are training in Sydney tower and a further 15 are expected to start training between now and the end of 2027. But he also said that “from a Sydney-specific [perspective], recruitment has proven challenging for us”.
“Whilst we’re actually recruiting even internationally qualified air traffic controllers, they don’t always pass the tests,” Sharp said.