Another two incidents at Sydney Airport have triggered new investigations into its operations.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is now looking at new incidents on August 16 and August 25, which involved Virgin Australia, Qantas, QantasLink and Jetstar planes.
The latest incidents mean there are now a total of six inquiries into air traffic control at the airport in the last month alone.
ATSB classified the two new cases as safety incidents, and not serious incidents, because there was no immediate risk of collision.
The close call on August 16 was between two taxiing flights – a Virgin and a Qantas plane.
The Virgin aircraft was instructed to give way to the Qantas plane, but the Virgin crew did not read back the instruction, and air traffic control did not identify that it had not been acknowledged.
Fortunately, the Qantas crew was able to spot the approaching Virgin flight, halt using its normal brake, and then correct the taxiing sequence.
The second incident, on Tuesday morning, saw traffic controllers give incomplete information to the crew of a taxiing Jetstar plane – which confused the order of pushback operations.
Two new incidents with taxiing aircraft at Sydney Airport (above) on August 16 and August 25 have triggered two new investigations
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is investigating six incidents at Sydney Airport since July 27
The other incidents being examined include a taxiing conflict recorded on August 18, two near-collisions on August 9, and another near-miss on July 27.
The most serious was the near-collision between a Jetstar and a Qatar plane on August 9.
A Jetstar crew member was injured when the pilot was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid colliding with the Qatar aircraft, which sustained damage.
Airservices, the government body responsible for safely managing airways, has previously acknowledged a shortage of air traffic control staff and apologised for being slow to hire and train new workers.
ATSB said it is investigating each of the new incidents separately to ‘provide assurances around the safety defences in place’, and to ‘establish or rule out any underlying safety issues and contributing factors’ common across the incidents.
Those investigations will involve interviewing involved air traffic controllers, flight crew and ground crew, and reviewing available recorded data.
ATSB estimated the investigations will be completed within eight weeks.
