Safety is Airservices’ top priority and we are committed to working with all stakeholders including airlines, unions, regulators, ground handlers and airport operators to keep the travelling public safe.
We take reporting requirements seriously and work closely with regulators to ensure that they are appropriately informed of any incident that meets reporting thresholds.
We will work with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) on their investigations regarding recent ground incidents at Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport. Each of the incidents currently under investigation involves a different set of circumstances and stakeholders, and we are unable to comment further before the ATSB releases its final assessment.
For clarity, initial details on the most recent incident around 10am on Sunday 9 August:
- While VA555 was cleared to take off, that clearance was cancelled immediately by our controller and the Virgin aircraft remained at the starting end of the runway, around 1.3km distant from the Qantas aircraft that was crossing from a taxiway.
- The staff member who issued the initial take-off clearance was an experienced controller undertaking a regular endorsement check supervised by another qualified controller, who immediately directed the cancellation to be issued.
- Take-off clearance was subsequently re-issued and VA555 successfully took off from where it was positioned at the end of the runway.
Our initial review determined the supervising controller immediately identified the potential for conflict and directed the controller to cancel the take-off clearance prior to the pilot commencing take-off. We do not believe that the occurrence met the reporting threshold in this case however we will work with the ATSB to clarify all data points regarding this incident.
