Air traffic controllers will be hard to replace, union says

The union representing 10 air traffic controllers in Regina who have been given layoff notices by NAV Canada warns the workers will be difficult to replace if cuts to the airport tower materialize.

Doug Best, president of the Canadian Air Traffic Control Association, said training an air traffic controller is expensive and takes years.

If the workers are ultimately laid off, he believes they will be scooped up elsewhere.

“(They’re) highly sought out all around the world. There’s a shortage of air traffic controllers around the entire world,” Best said.

“If the expectation is by NAV Canada these people will just be sitting around waiting, collecting some sort of a subsidy, that’s not going to be the case.”

The layoff notices were issued as NAV Canada, a non-profit corporation that runs the country’s civil air navigation system, studies the need for air traffic control at the Regina airport. It has said if the study does not result in a change in service, those notices will be rescinded.

Best’s comments signal that rebooting air traffic control would not be done in a pinch. That has been a concern of the Regina Airport Authority, which sees air traffic control as essential for the post-COVID-19 recovery.

“It’s always difficult to get something to restart again if it’s turned off,” James Bogusz, the airport authority’s CEO, said in November.

NAV Canada is pursuing the study in Regina and in several other Canadian cities to see if advisory service would be better-suited for the airport considering trends in air traffic.

While stakeholders, experts and the airport authority itself do not believe safety would be compromised, Best disagrees.

He asks people to think of the airport as a busy intersection and with air traffic control, “it’s me telling each and every one of the cars what they’re allowed to do versus everybody running on their own.”

“If you have a control tower, they’re going to be safely separated,” he added. “If you have an advisory service, the pilots have to separate themselves.”