A vitriolic report from the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) for civil aviation safety points out the self-management of air traffic controllers’ working time and calls for the establishment of an automatic control system of presence.
Soon the end of recess for air traffic controllers? In any case, this is what the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) recommends for civil aviation safety. In a report published at the end of December, the national authority recommends the establishment of automatic means of monitoring the presence of air traffic controllers at their workplace. So the end of the little planning arrangements of the air traffic controllers. They had in fact taken the unfortunate habit of organizing “outside any legal framework, a level of staff present generally lower than the staff theoretically determined as necessary“. In short, to put fewer controllers in place than necessary.
This call to order from the BEA actually follows a “incident grave» happened last year. On December 31, 2022, an easyJet airliner almost collided with a tourist plane at Bordeaux-Mérignac airport. The two machines had only passed about fifty meters from each other. A dangerous situation due, according to the investigation, to “an insufficient number of controllers present at their workplace, and consequently insufficient arming of control positions“. Except that according to the BEA investigators, it is not an isolated problem, linked to the date or to a dubious organization of the Bordeaux controllers, but rather a “social consensus, anchored for many years at the Air Navigation Services Directorate (DSNA)».
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1 in 10 air traffic controllers are absent
Air traffic controllers would therefore hold the bar less firmly than required by safety standards. And this because of “the latitude implicitly given to tower managers to manage the workforce“, says the BEA. Experts point to an understaffing of personnel at the time of the incident: three controllers including the tower manager, instead of six. Already in 2002, the Court of Auditors denounced “a work organization uncorrelated with traffic requirements for the benefit of increased rest time for controllers», recalls the BEA. In 2010, the Sages of rue Cambon returned to the charge in a new report: “ opacity persisted regarding the monitoring of attendance, contrary to what was observed in foreign countries and that the desire of the unions to maintain them had led to systems which were not up to the security requirements which must prevail in air traffic control “. Again in 2021, the Court of Auditors noted that “no system for clocking in or monitoring the working time of air traffic controllers had been put in place».
Although the DSNA subsequently implemented a time declaration tool, known as OLAF ATCO, this system remains declarative. The Directorate of Air Navigation Services even carried out presence checks in the main French centers on February 21 and April 4, 2023. Results? Impossible to determine the number of agents working their entire shift. Only 69% of agents work half or more of the scheduled working time, 12% do not show up at all and 13% work half or less than the scheduled time, some of them less than two hours of total attendance. Worrying attendance rates, highlighted by the BEA.
Pointing required
So to finally be in compliance with the recommendations of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the Bureau of Investigations and Analysis recommends “the adoption of an automatic and nominative system for checking the presence of controllers on position», like the individual badge for example. This would be the only way to guarantee access to “reliable and objective information on the presence of controllers on location and at their workplace“. In short, a valuable tool for checking compliance with security standards. Because the current situation, “outside the legal framework, but known and implicitly tolerated, is likely to prohibit any official collection of information which would lead to the identification of these deviations, including in the context of the analysis of security events“. That is why “the subject of reducing actual presences compared to those planned by the duty roster and its possible impact in terms of security is never addressed during the analysis of a security event by the DSNA, nor at the local level nor at the national level».
The BEA report is so edifying that Clément Beaune himself looked into the issue and sent a letter to Damien Cazé, the director general of civil aviation. In his missive dated December 19 and published by the specialized site aeroVFRthe minister in charge of transport insists: “maintaining a high level of security is a priority objective” and that'”as such, the incident which occurred constitutes the symptom of a failure which must be remedied as soon as possible“. Siding with the BEA, the minister recalls the “inequity between the volume of traffic and the effective arming of control positions which directly contributed to the incident».
This is why Clément Beaune asks the Director General of Civil Aviation to “report within one month on the actions already taken since the incident to improve the situation and their effectiveness“. A request coupled with an injunction to be put in place with the DSNA “an action plan with an ambitious timetable aimed at implementing the BEA recommendation» concerning the installation of an automatic presence control system. Representative trade union organizations will have to participate in the discussions, insists Clément Beaune, who, to support his point, closes his letter with a “I count on you” hand-written.
2023-12-27 19:04:30
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