Safety hazards in air space: ATCs demand duty pattern as per international rules

Around 300 Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), who man the air space, have demanded a two-hour working pattern as per international rules in order to minimise safety hazards in the country's air space.
ATCs are compelled to perform their duties for more than two hours at a stretch and these duties can be stretched to as long as seven to 10 hours without break due to acute shortage of trained ATCs; which is dangerous to the safety of air traffic, sources in CAA said.
The job of ATCs is ranked as one of the top three most stressful jobs in the world, as they have to look into the areas of danger activities, adverse weather deviation from route, equipment malfunctioning, frequency disturbance, and emergency handling etc, said Azkar a former Air Traffic Controller and GM at CAA Pakistan.
The controllers are highly over worked by any stretch of meaning; the dilemma is that the CAA management is not at all concerned to resolve the issue. Instead of taking safety related matter seriously the management tends to make it a political issue. The aviation business is based on safety in terms of 24 hours a day as not a single minute in aviation could be risked due to the responsibility of hundreds of lives, let alone the expensive aircraft or reputation of airline or the country.
This is an old issue and continues to be put on back burner by consecutive CAA managements specially those from forces, the issue could be understood better by the recommendations of the authority's Chief Medical Officer Dr S G Kadir on August 30, 2000 to the then Director General which read as under: "It is suggested that air traffic controllers be given two hour rest after continuous performance of three hours night duties and one hour rest after continuous performing of four hours day duties as subsequent intervals".
Dr Kadir had mentioned in his report that sleep deprivation of 40-60 hours causes extreme fatigue, lack of attention, irritability, deteriorating of performance, visual disturbances, and hallucinations. "Thus, when there is high intensity of air traffic, the increase reactive activity continuously without break constitutes psychosomatic disorders of ATCs. This requires proper working conditions of job without adequate rest intervals so as to prevent on-job fatigue and on-job emotional over-strains, thus ensuring proper safety of aircraft operations at international airports."
The situation has not changed even after 12 years for ATCs and they still are working under poor environment with maximum risks. It is ironic that CAA does not follow the orders of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in this regard, which in its circular 241-AN/145 titled "Human Factors Digest No 8: Human Factors in Air Traffic Control" categorised classes of errors occur in ATC, so that appropriate procedures to remove them could be devised by the respective aviation authorities, he said.
"An important livewire issue is that of controllers becoming tired or fatigued, because when people are over-tired, their judgment could be impaired, and the safety and efficiency of the ATC service could be put at risk," the ICAO circular stated, adding that it was unacceptable situation because ATCs must not be over-tired for better safety measures.
Similarly, it further states: "Staffing levels have to make provision for adequate rest breaks during each shift. The maximum recommended continuous work period without a break is normally about two hours, especially under high traffic demands. Even if traffic demands have been light and the controller has been under-loaded and bored, rest breaks are still needed".
It may be pointed out that the controller's workload should not exceed a certain level known as Heavy Load Threshold (HLT), as beyond this level the controller will be unable to handle the air traffic safely. According to the Central European Air Traffic Services (CEATS) the HLT is usually 70 percent. Eurocontrol Experimental Centre simulation studies validated the quantitative interpretation, which terms 70 percent or above workload threshold as overloaded. While 54 to 69 percent is heavy loaded, 30 to 53 percent is medium loaded, and 18 to 29 percent is light load.
As per sources, the HLT values of East, West, and North sectors of Karachi airspace are 71 percent, 82 percent, and 72 percent respectively with radar and 99.5 percent, 115 percent, and 99.5 percent respectively with non-radar. Since this is beyond the capacity of the controllers, there is a dire need of activating new sectors. "We have large traffic areas, so in order to manage this much airspace efficiently CAA should at-least short the current areas. This will also enhance the strength of ATCs for good monitoring," he added.