The new Western Sydney International Airport, and the new risks it brings to aviation
The opening of the new Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport [or “WSI”] is a much-anticipated event. It’s been a long time coming, but there is one group which is not nearly so keenly looking forward to its opening, and that’s the flying schools based at nearby Bankstown, NSW.
At the moment, for ab-initio flying training, the student and their instructor take off from Bankstown, and after flying west for a short distance, they are in the “training area”, where they have the airspace to work through a series of lessons such as learning how to fly straight and level, climbing and descending, turning and stalling. After first solo back at the airfield, students return to the training area for other important exercises such as forced landings (practising to glide the aircraft to a landing in the event of an engine failure), and further solo practice.
Flying training is conducted under Visual Flight rules (VFR), where pilots navigate by looking out the window at the ground, and use their eyes to avoid other aircraft.
The current arrangement of airspace is as shown:
Unfortunately, there will now be a great big international airport right slap bang in the middle of this training area, and these small training aircraft will be quite literally pushed to the sidelines.
Here’s a map of the new arrangement of airspace from 9th July this year:
The little purple dots in the map indicate the routes that VFR aircraft must follow, including those that wish to exit Bankstown airport enroute to a location where they can commence their training exercises, most likely somewhere to the south [we don’t really know yet], where they will be mixing it with gliders at Camden and parachutists at Wilton.
The new routes are to the west and the south-west.
What this means in practice is that instead of the previous short transit to the training area, student pilots will need to fly for some additional 12 to 20 nautical miles each way, flying along narrow, prescribed lanes, navigating via GPS around the airspace for the new airport, before they can commence their training exercise.
Before they can even start up they will also need to submit a flight plan and receive a “start clearance” from air traffic control, an “airways clearance” specifying their departure route, and be assigned a transponder code [so they are visible on radar].
There may be other sources of delay. If there are too many people on the relevant radio frequency, air traffic control may not give start clearances to aircraft that want to take off and leave the airport. Incoming aircraft may not be given a clearance to enter the zone, leaving the prospect of multiple aircraft circling at Brooklyn Bridge to the north, or Nepean Bridge to the west, or St Helens Skate Park to the south (wherever that is) waiting their turn to come in.
Of course, a good instructor will ensure the extra time is not completely wasted, e.g there will be a lot more opportunity for extended, accurate straight-and-level practice, but it will nevertheless be a considerable additional impost.
Neither the GPS nor transponder, nor any other navigation devices will assist the low-time, solo student to maintain the correct altitude, which will also be a requirement when flying in one of these transit lanes, which may also be in close proximity to other aircraft flying in the opposite direction, or in one case, with climbing and descending aircraft actually crossing paths. The likelihood of mid-air collision may be greatly increased in comparison to the current situation, where incoming and outgoing aircraft are generally more widely separated.
Another risk will be that of “Violations of Controlled Airspace” (VCAs), in which a light aircraft infringes the limits of the new controlled airspace around WSI, again increasing the risk of mid-air collision with something really big and heavy, and potentially full of passengers. Of course, air traffic controllers use radar and procedural controls to maintain aircraft separation and reduce this risk as far as reasonably practicable, and they do it very well, but I would argue that the risk is nevertheless increased.
Looking at the map, we can predict right now where these risks are most likely to be realised:
For more advanced or accomplished pilots, this may all be OK. They need to leave the airport anyway; there may be some delays but they need to travel the distance to go further afield in any case. But for smaller flying schools that substantially rely on ab initio flying training and operate under VFR, they may find their business is no longer viable.
The best solution – for both the student pilots and the flying schools that train them, might be to leave town. This is happening already. Students based in the south are moving to Camden, or further south to Shellharbour airport. To the north, Warnervale on the Central Coast becomes an attractive option. The larger schools and their full-time students can move to operate from further afield and many already do so, e.g. Coffs Harbour, Tamworth, or Cowra.
What other solutions might there have been? When one looks at the map, the most obvious place is the Richmond control zone. This area is jealously guarded by the Air Force, no doubt as a national security imperative. How busy is it in terms of aircraft movements? It’s not reported by Airservices Australia, but it’s probably not very much in comparison to Bankstown. And one might argue that any training of young pilots is in any case potentially a benefit to national security.
Have Airservices Australia, which manages our airspace, done something bad or wrong? The answer has to be “no, not really.” They’ve no doubt put considerable effort into making the best of it. They have informed the industry and consulted. And evidently the economic benefits of having a second major airport in the Sydney basin, and with no curfew, outweigh the downside caused by the potential failure of a few small flying schools, which were pretty marginally profitable in the first place.
It will be interesting to see how it all goes after 9th July.
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