Pilots fear collisions as staffing crisis leaves Australian control towers empty

Concerns among pilots about a possible mid-air collision are spilling over in Australia as a shortage of air traffic controllers leaves airport towers unmanned, forcing passenger jets to fend for themselves. There are currently no overnight air traffic control services at Darwin, a northern gateway for carriers including Qantas Airways Ltd. and Virgin Australia. Schedules show that at around midnight almost every day, more than a dozen flights have to arrive or depart with almost no guidance from the ground. On Australia’s northeast coast, the airport at Townsville — a popular jumping off point for the Great Barrier Reef — doesn’t staff its control tower at weekends. Almost 50 commercial services have to coordinate their own landings or takeoffs on Sunday alone. The labor crisis on the ground is adding risk in the air during the post-Covid travel boom, with flight crews taking on the task of distancing their planes from other air traffic — a responsibility that ordinarily lies with air traffic controllers. Pilots say landing without direction from a tower removes an important layer of security at a critical period of the flight. Concerned crews are blowing the whistle after a surge in passenger traffic. Airlines have scheduled 866 flights into Darwin this month, the most this year, up from a Covid-era low of 171 in May 2020, according to Cirium data. Runway construction work at the airport that restricts plane movements is making landing and taking off without help even more complicated, pilots say.<br/>