As we reflect on another year that saw COVID-19 continue to challenge so many, Airservices continues to deliver on its purpose — to connect people with their world safely — adapting to meet the needs of the aviation industry, without compromise to our safety record.

When the pandemic began in early 2020, we faced the immediate challenge of maintaining safe service delivery and looked forward to the return of pre-pandemic conditions. Some 2 years on, COVID-19 and the associated disruption is still very much with us, and we have more than adjusted to operating in the continuing volatile environment.

We began the year with the east coast of Australia in lockdown, along with three-quarters of our employee base, and saw the arrival of the Omicron COVID-19 variant just as state border restrictions began to ease. By March, the first Omicron peak had passed, travel hesitancy eased, domestic air traffic was rebounding, and international commercial air traffic was beginning to return.

Through it all, we have delivered a continuous service to the nation, ensuring the safe, reliable and efficient use of airspace for all users, while at the same time protecting the health and wellbeing of our people.

The international market accounted for half of our revenue pre-pandemic. While we continued to deliver our services across the same proportion of airspace, with fewer carriers and limited routes, we saw our costs outweigh revenue at a rate that the domestic market could not offset. Noting that the industry was still recovering, we continued to share their pain and have sustained and built on our cost saving efforts from last year, as well as relying of the financial support provided from the government last year to ease our funding shortfalls. For the year, we recorded a net loss after tax of $347.6 million excluding restructuring costs. This has allowed us to continue to deliver safe, regular and efficient services, and to continue to invest in our transformation.

We maintain our focus on transforming and repositioning our organisation to meet the future needs of the industry and all those who use our skies.

Our OneSKY Program, in conjunction with Department of Defence, is central to this and will deliver a world-first harmonised civil and military air traffic management system (CMATS) for Australian airspace in 2026, unlocking an associated $1.2 billion in economic benefits for the aviation industry over the next 2 decades. During the year, the program entered formal testing for the initial release of the system and installation began at number of sites.

To support and enable the OneSKY Program and our future aviation services, we are modernising our critical telecommunications network infrastructure as part of our Enterprise Network Modernisation Program (ENMP), with the network design process progressing well.

Digitalising and automating our service is similarly an important focus. We are implementing the use of remote digital tower technology at 2 sites — Canberra Airport and Western Sydney International Airport (WSIA), with testing to begin at Canberra Airport later this year.

As we increasingly see Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS), such as drones and advanced air mobility, operate in Australia’s low-level airspace, we have progressed the development of a Flight Information Management System (FIMS) prototype to unlock the benefits of an increasingly integrated airspace environment. The FIMS will serve as the interface that underpins the safe and efficient integration of these emerging aerospace users.

Our Airspace Modernisation Program is delivering enhanced safety through a range of initiatives including the introduction of a Surveillance Flight Information Service (SFIS) at Ballina, a Safety Alerting Service (SAS) at Mangalore and surveillance approach services at Hobart, Launceston, Mackay and Rockhampton airports.

Many of these programs will also support service provision for several significant, once-in-a-generation, aviation infrastructure investments planned for Western Sydney, Melbourne and Perth airports, adding new aviation capacity to support the economy, businesses
and the travelling public, while also creating jobs.

As this infrastructure prepares to come online, we play an important role in the design of new safe and efficient flight paths that will feed into the airports. A key part of this involves carefully considering and balancing the needs of all stakeholders, including airports, airlines and communities.

Our experience designing flight paths for the new parallel runway at Brisbane Airport has demonstrated the standards expected for best practice community engagement. In response, we are committed to improving our approach, including revising our Community Engagement Framework to better reflect contemporary community engagement processes, models and practices. In Brisbane, we have also sought expert advice to ensure we meet community expectations, engaging global air traffic management adviser Trax International, to independently review and make improvement recommendations across all aspects of the Post Implementation Review (PIR) of Brisbane airspace. As we progress the PIR, we are committed to ensuring that the views of all stakeholders are appropriately considered and that opportunities for any improved noise outcomes, assessed as being safe and feasible, are progressed.

Minimising the impact of aviation noise on communities where practicable is one of the 4 goals set out in our Environmental Sustainability Strategy 2021-2026.

The strategy recognises that sustainability is a key driver of future success for our organisation and also aims to facilitate aircraft emission reductions; preserve biodiversity health; and ensure sustainable and resilient operations whilst reducing our environment footprint. Implementation of the strategy places our organisation on a trajectory to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Airservices is a people-centric organisation and our people are critical to our success. In a volatile operating environment, further exacerbated by elevated levels of illness as a result of COVID-19 and flu, our people have adapted to meet the varying needs of our customers and ensure the continued, safe delivery of our service.

Our commitment to building a thriving purpose and values-led organisation continues to be a focus across the organisation. With the recommended actions of the 2019 Review of Culture at Airservices Australia undertaken by Elizabeth Broderick and Co. now implemented, we are building on this foundational work with further initiatives to foster diversity and inclusion, develop our leaders, promote health and wellbeing, as well as recognise and celebrate team members that live our values.

On behalf of the Board and Executive, we extend our thanks to all for their commitment, resilience and hard work through another challenging year.

It is a privilege to present the Airservices 2021-22 Annual Report and to provide an update on the progress we have made over the past year. While the complex challenges in our operating environment continue, we remain committed to connecting people with their world
safely, linking family and friends, generating economic activity, facilitating trade and tourism and creating jobs.