Air Traffic and Navigation Services, the State-owned company that is responsible for South Africa’s air traffic management, announced on Sunday that its Area Radar Controller at OR Tambo International Airport (Johannesburg), Peter van Rooyen, had been elected Executive VP of the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations (IFATCA). This happened during the recent (fity-seventh) IFATCA Conference, in Accra, Ghana.

Van Rooyen has been chairperson of one of IFATCA’s committees (“Committee C”) for the past four years. He is also the executive VP (professional) of the Guild of Air Traffic Controllers of South Africa (GATCSA).

“The experience in GATCSA and IFATCA has broadened my overall knowledge and has given me a good international context to several important issues that affect air traffic control in South Africa and globally,” he said. “[W]e need to realise that all our members have various work-related challenges and we should, where practically possible, assist and give guidance accordingly because they are the federation in the end.”

Van Rooyen has identified four key issues that the IFATCA board should focus on over the next two years. These all directly affect air traffic control officers (ATCOs).

The first, which is also a major concern of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, is the management of fatigue risk. Too may air navigation service providers (ANSPs) are still rostering single ATCOs to handle busy airspaces for long hours. In a number of countries poor pay forces ATCOs to take second jobs, significantly increasing fatigue.

The second key issue is that of competency and licensing. “[C]ompetency have [sic] been an issue due to many things, unfortunately a new angle in competency is coming up very fast; many ANSPs had staff shortage[s], so they took it upon themselves to ‘fast track’ training of ATCOs to meet the required capacity,” he cautioned.

“Just Culture” is the third issue. “[W]e still have a lot of cases where ANSPs are punishing controllers for errors, even if the errors are systemic errors.”

Finally, working conditions. “[T]hough most ANSPs today try to improve the working environment of ATCOs there are still some that lag, and in some countries, controllers work under unbearable conditions,” highlighted Van Rooyen.