No concern for safety with loss of air traffic control: Expert

While there might be changes coming to Regina’s air traffic control, one expert says it’s nothing to worry about from a safety perspective.

John Gradek is a faculty lecturer at McGill University and the co-ordinator of the Aviation Manager program. He said NAV Canada is currently evaluating air traffic control services at airports across the country. At some airports, including the one in Regina, NAV Canada is looking at removing its employees from the air traffic control tower it with flying services stations.

“Regina has controllers that manage separation between airplanes and look at giving clearances to pilots to land and take off,” Gradek said. “What would now happen under this new scenario is that the only staff NAV Canada would have in Regina would be individuals that they’re calling flight service specialists and these individuals provide information to pilots and then relay information between the airport in Regina and Winnipeg Centre, which will continue to be the main traffic control clearance for Manitoba and Saskatchewan.”

But despite the possible change, he said people don’t need to worry about safety when booking their next getaway – whenever that may be.

“When pilots fly across the Canadian airspace, they know the rules about flight separation (and) they know they have to be on the lookout for aircraft. Most of the issues that you would have would be either on the approach landing or taking off and that’s when pilots are hyper-vigilant on movements around them and they rely quite a bit on Winnipeg Centre to basically clear them to land,” Gradek said.

But while travellers might not see a difference, Gradek sees why airport authorities are unhappy with the decision.

“It really is something that the airport authorities should be concerned about — the loss of air traffic control — but it’s not compromising safety,” he said. “It’s more so about looking at the volume of flights.”

He said the main people who will face issues getting into the air are general flights and flight schools.

“The guys who will be holding are not the commercial guys. The commercial guys will get priority, the military will get priority and then general aviation will fly whenever Winnipeg Centre gives them the authority to fly,” Gradek said.

He doesn’t see any major airlines pulling services from an airport just because it no longer has air traffic control services.

“You have a number of locations in Canada where you have the major airlines – WestJet and Air Canada – flying jets into stations that are only flight service stations so there’s no risk of a carrier pulling out of a station, because you’re converting it from a control tower to a flight services station,” Gradek said.

“The only thing that would happen to Regina would be that the number of airplanes Regina would be controlling every hour or have the capacity for every hour would be reduced.”

Gradek said airport authorities need to make the case that NAV Canada needs to focus on 2019 numbers and not ones seen in 2020 or 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re seeing changes across aviation in Canada,” he said. “We’re a shadow of our former selves in terms of the number of flights being operated and Regina’s not exempt from that. We’ve had significant reduction in flights across Canada.

“The question would be, ‘When we go back to regular services, what’s the level of flights that are going to be offered in and out of Regina and what kind of change will there be when compared to 2019?’ ” Gradek said.

Gradek said that despite the layoff notices given, he doesn’t think a decision has fully been made. He said it’s probably a part of NAV Canada’s human resources practice to alert employees about a possible change and those layoff notices could be pulled in an instant.

“If there’s one failing by NAV Canada in this exercise is that they’re not being open enough as they should be with the local authorities and the local media about how they’re going to go about doing this evaluation,” Gradek said.