What’s behind Sydney airport’s heavy delays and near-miss incident?

Air traffic controllers are short-staffed and exhausted – and new recruits face a difficult aptitude test and must train in Melbourne

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Travellers flying in and out of Sydney airport had already been dealing with heavy delays even before a Jetstar plane narrowly avoided colliding with a Qatar Airways plane on the tarmac early on Sunday.

The day before, more than 150 flights passing through Sydney were delayed as the airport grappled with a lack of air traffic controllers, highlighting how just how delicate the rostering situation is.

While Sunday’s incident is under investigation – an air traffic controller and a tug driver were temporarily stood down for mandatory drug and alcohol testing – the issue has shone a spotlight on the severe staffing shortages of those in charge of managing air traffic, and takeoffs and landings.

‘Doing the work of two people’

While air traffic controllers are entitled to unlimited sick leave under their terms of employment, Scott Nugent, the president of the air traffic controllers’ union Civil Air, says the issue “is that we do not have enough controllers just to fill the base roster before we have any sick leave at all”.

“In practice, the only way you fill the roster is with overtime, and it relies on overtime just to do business as usual,” says Nugent.

The experienced air traffic controller says workers are getting to the point where they’ve done so much overtime that they’re exhausted. Some staff are working 10 days on and then having one day off.

“The reason you’ve seen these delays in the last week is because we increased the spacing between aircraft to maintain safety when we have less people,” he says.

“If you’re doing the work of two people, you can only take half as many planes.”

Much of the problem is tied to a pandemic-era program that incentivised a significant number of experienced staff to leave Airservices Australia, the commonwealth-owned organisation responsible for the management of the country’s skies, in 2021.

With most planes grounded due to pandemic restrictions, 140 employees aged 56 or older accepted a redundancy.

Soon after, the organisation embarked on a large recruitment drive but hirings have failed to keep up with demand.

Gaps in rosters

Despite the starting salary for a qualified air traffic controller post-training being $116,990 a year – an experienced supervisor can earn a base salary of almost $300,000 – Airservices has struggled with recruitment ever since the pandemic.

In February 2024, two air traffic controllers who didn’t show up for work at Sydney airport caused cascading flight delays and cancellations across the country. Airservices narrowly avoided a similar incident in September last year.

At the same time it has been trying to plug roster gaps, Airservices has been preparing for a once-in-a-generation transformation to a new flight-tracking computer system, as well as managing past allegations of workplace bullying.

A review into workplace culture, conducted by the former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick’s firm, found 27% of staff in 2023 had experienced bullying in the past 12 months, up from 23% in 2020.

From July 2022 to 2026, Airservices says it endorsed 245 controllers, most of whom qualified in 2025-2026. Over the same four-year period, 86 controllers left the organisation.

Airservices says it now has a record number of controllers across Australia. There were 985 controllers in December 2020 and 1,073 as of July this year, according to the organisation.

However, the organisation says the demands on its workforce have also grown significantly, citing the new Western Sydney airport and its recent takeover of the airspace at Ballina in northern New South Wales .

There still aren’t enough controllers at Sydney , Australia’s busiest airport.

Tough tests and training demands

A newly qualified controller can’t just fill the gap left by a retiring veteran.

After 18 months of training, a newly qualified controller may be able to work in one position at a Sydney tower, such as helping organise the taxiways around the domestic airport.

That person wouldn’t be qualified, for example, to work on the taxiways around the international airport, or runways, which require additional training, making newer employees less able to fill urgent vacancies.

Airservices acknowledges there’s a problem. It says training experienced controllers for Sydney airport is its “top priority” but it can’t say when it will have recruited a sufficient number.

It takes about two years to train a controller, and that’s only if someone can get past the initial screening, which includes a difficult online aptitude test as one of the first hurdles.

“Only a very, very small number of people get through the application process,” says Nugent. “We’re usually talking about 2,000 people who might apply, and you hire 15 of them.”

Additionally, applicants must move to Melbourne for the mandatory training. Only offering training at one location is seen as an impediment, because some applicants don’t want to relocate given there’s a risk they don’t pass.

Airservices says it is considering different training locations, and says it has a new simulator in Sydney.