Performance area: Significant attributable safety occurrences

1 Source: Airservices 2023–24 Corporate Plan, page 21.

Analysis

We operate with a ‘safe always’ focus with no significant attributable safety occurrences recorded for our aerospace and aviation rescue fire fighting services during the year. We have a mature safety management system and culture, and regard safety as our highest priority as required by our Act.

Throughout the year, we focused on reducing operational deviations among Metropolitan Class D (Metro D) based pilot communities. We used a variety of channels to achieve this, including face-to-face workshops, web content and short-form animations. Our local tower and approach controllers played an essential role by ensuring that the content was relevant to the local areas. They collaborated closely with local operators to maintain discussions about operational procedures and clarify best practices.

Key messaging in our materials emphasised the importance of familiarisation with the current aeronautical information products (AIP), effective communication with air traffic control (ATC), and the supportive role that ATC plays in ensuring safety. The response to our online engagement initiatives has consistently been positive. Recipients found the messaging both worthwhile and relevant, which has supported our direct discussions with operators. Collaborating with local operators and controllers has been instrumental in growing the level of engagement and ensuring that our safety messaging is both effective and memorable.

In maintaining safety performance, our ATM critical controls continue to effectively manage any risk-bearing events and prevent the margins of safety from being compromised. Where the margins of safety have been compromised (a rare event), the effectiveness of our critical controls is mostly impacted because of the limited time controllers have to intervene, largely due to sudden pilot deviations. Continued monitoring, development and delivery of safety awareness and promotional materials through industry engagement activities is critical to supporting our air traffic risk-management efforts.

* This metric better represents Airservices contribution to industry capacity and replaces on-time performance.

1 Source: Airservices 2023–24 Corporate Plan, page 21.

2 Monthly average result.

Analysis

Aviation traffic patterns have broadly grown across the Australian network during the financial year despite volatility on some routes. We continued to work closely with our industry partners and customers to improve service delivery and increase resilience, while improving service performance outcomes.

Although we delivered on our overall planned capacity, cancellations and ground delay commitments for the financial year, our services’ reliability did not consistently meet the high standards expected by our customers and stakeholders, nor the standards we expect of ourselves. At times, particularly during December 2023 and January 2024, the network was affected by our operational challenges.

In addition to our overall KPIs (Top 4 Airports in aggregate) for planned capacity, cancellations and ground delay, our location specific KPIs enable us to gather a more detailed representation of our performance and help to measure our reliability and consistency across the 4 busiest airports in Australia. Despite performing well at most locations, we saw challenges in Brisbane with the end of year result being 4% below target for planned capacity. We also exceeded the ground delay target at Perth by 6 hours. Although Melbourne also exceeded its ground delay KPI target, service impacts were low with ground delay (hours) averaging 1 hour per month. Analysis to determine the cause across these locations, is mainly down to staffing challenges.

The second half of the financial year saw significant improvements in our service performance. This was driven by our focus on additional layers of service resilience, flexibility and increasing the number of operational air traffic controllers, which have stabilised our operational capacity and established a trend of improving performance as we look to improve trust in our services.

Key initiatives

OneSKY and aerospace

OneSKY delivers a harmonised civil and military air traffic management system that enables us to meet Australia’s air traffic management needs into the future, maintain Defence capability, and meet national security imperatives. We will be replacing the current independent civil and military air traffic management systems with a single advanced system through the Civil Military Air Traffic Management System (CMATS), that will improve aviation safety and efficiency through a standardised, modernised national airspace, and transition our aerodromes to a digital platform.

Achievements

We have made considerable progress in this reporting period with the ongoing development of CMATS including implementing a revised streamlined CMATS Delivery Strategy in December 2023, which prioritises national benefits and simplifies the design, development and delivery process.

CMATS capabilities will be incrementally developed, rigorously verified, and seamlessly integrated into the National Airways System (NAS), marking a significant step towards our goal to manage Australian airspace safely and efficiently as a national resource for both civil and military operations.

The testing campaign for incremental software builds have commenced and will continue until 2026, followed by operationalisation from 2027. The new CMATS facilities at all Airservices sites are complete and a plan has been developed to sequentially transition Australian airspace sectors from the current air traffic management system to the new CMATS environment.

The Project of Concern (POC) process continues to provide a top-level focus and strong commitment from all parties, strengthening our approach to deliver a unified next-generation air traffic management system for Australia.

A number of POC summits have been held, bringing together all parties to successfully develop and implement remediation actions relating to the schedule, governance and performance measures.

Enterprise network modernisation

The Enterprise Network Modernisation Program (ENMP) supports the development of a next-generation telecommunications network architecture for service expansion to deliver greater network resilience and reliability for our industry. This is a key dependency for the OneSKY and Western Sydney International (WSI) airport programs. The ENMP will enable a digitised service with a next-generation telecommunications and surveillance network that is highly resilient, dependable, flexible and secure.

Achievements

We made substantial progress during the year to enhance the reliability and performance of our telecommunications network by migrating 70 obsolete copper services to more advanced technology, with over 83% of services now remediated. We have successfully repointed over 105 impacted sites in response to the unexpected retirement of the satellite service supporting the backup network and have upgraded telecommunication services from the legacy 3G platform to new solutions.

We have completed 5 out of 7 capital city installations for the new network build and will be increasing network diversity by utilising services from multiple telecommunication providers. This will increase network capability by enhancing resilience, building capacity and reducing the potential risk for service interruptions.

Building on our progress in network design, we have entered the test and evaluation phase to provide assurance that the network solution is suitable for future operations. The new network design will significantly improve our telecommunications network performance and resilience, creating an operating platform for WSI airport, CMATS and other digital capabilities. Upon completion of testing, we anticipate moving into implementation over the course of 2024–25.

Key initiatives

Operational technology and cyber

Improve our capabilities in timely decision-making, effective delivery of our services and gaining efficiencies in managing our aviation network, while maintaining a sufficient level of cyber-resilience to meet our needs in a changing environment.

Airport collaborative decision-making (A-CDM) is designed to facilitate enhanced collaboration of teams across the network by ensuring all airport partners have access to the same data to help their operations run at full capacity. A-CDM provides common situational awareness and supports the flow of traffic to effectively minimise delays, enable fuel savings and improve overall passenger experience. A-CDM will optimise airport operations through enhanced collaboration with customers by sharing real-time data and insights.

Achievements

We have secured formal agreements from our industry partners and devised a 2-stage deployment strategy to implement A-CDM into Brisbane, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne airports.

In September 2023, we reached our first significant milestone by making the A-CDM platform available to our industry partners to enable enhanced situational awareness. We will continue to support our partners as they build their interfaces to transfer data directly into the platform ahead of the operational deployment for the first airport in the second half of 2024–25.

We continued to collaborate with our broader stakeholder group through awareness campaigns and by establishing local airport working groups. Once A-CDM has been delivered, this proven technology will support the optimised use of airport capacity and improved predictability of operations at our 4 busiest airports.

Aviation rescue fire fighting (ARFF) service capability uplift

Fleet replacement: Transform our ways of working by employing new and emerging technologies in the aviation rescue fire fighting environment. This will improve safety for our people, be financially and environmentally sustainable, and be scalable to cater for customer and industry requirements.

The fleet replacement program will transform our vehicle capabilities and drive efficiencies in both operations and safety of our people to ensure sustainability, resilience and long-term growth of ARFF services, with a strong focus on matching services to customer needs.

Achievements

We continued to progress replacement of our national fleet of ultra-large fire fighting vehicles (ULFVs) during the year. We commenced market evaluations for the first order of new UFLVs and have formally approached the market for proposed offerings. The composition of the future fleet is designed to meet both current and future needs of our people, industry, customers and the travelling public. We aim to incorporate the latest aviation fire fighting technology to ensure our ARFF service has vehicles that support our innovation, sustainability and service delivery targets.

These positive recruitment achievements are part of a holistic program of work to further improve our service performance, supported by enhancements to our training, rostering and accreditation processes.

We have commenced an international experienced controller recruitment campaign and it is anticipated that we will recruit and train international experienced controllers to supplement our recruitment and training pipeline of ab initio trainees.

We are also seeking to introduce functional endorsements to enhance resilience by increasing the number of air traffic controllers who can control airspace in periods of low volume and complexity, particularly overnight.

Analysis

The Australian aviation network recorded 3.7 million aircraft movements¹ in 2023–24, consistent with pre-pandemic levels, and with 70 new domestic routes delivering more direct connectivity to the travelling public. Over the medium to long-term, we expect growth in both domestic and international traffic to return to more stable and sustainable traffic patterns. New growth opportunities are likely to be driven by new technologies and aircraft types entering the market.

To support sustainable industry expansion we will invest in capabilities and infrastructure to provide new services and establish essential services to match our customer needs while balancing outcomes for all our stakeholders. Planning for the proposed Perth runway expansion is underway. We will be delivering enhancements to build safer aircraft operations in and around Ballina. We are also exploring opportunities in the Pilbara region to enhance our capabilities and operations to improve safety in Western Australia.

Key initiatives

Western Sydney International Airport

We are establishing essential service delivery and supporting infrastructure for Western Sydney International (WSI) airport. This will help position WSI airport as a digitally enabled international gateway and increase the aviation capacity of the Sydney basin. WSI airport will be the first publicly funded Australian airport to be built without a traditional air traffic control tower. We will leverage state-ofthe-art cameras positioned at the airfield to provide air traffic controllers with an enhanced 360° view displayed on a panorama of screens, supported by real-time operational data to manage arrivals and departures from a remote location.

We will deliver a balanced outcome for all stakeholders while supporting industry expansion and infrastructure development at WSI airport, including the establishment of a 24-hour digital aerodrome service (DAS) and ARFF services.

Achievements

The Australian Government is investing $5.3 billion to provide a new international airport in Western Sydney. We are supporting WSI airport in their aim to be a world-class smart airport, built to service 10 million passengers per year from opening day in late 2026. This brand new, state-of-the-art airport will offer domestic, international and freight services, providing a significant economic boost to the region and increasing the aviation capacity of the Sydney basin.

We are collaborating closely with our stakeholders to ensure we remain on schedule to provide aerodrome and ARFF services at WSI airport in time for its opening. This includes close engagement with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), Western Sydney Airport (WSA Co) and the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (the Department).

Our digital aerodrome services have undergone a system requirements and design review (SRDR) to ensure the technology is fit for purpose before it is built. We have also secured data centre sites and selected partners for the digital infrastructure and operational technology at both DAS locations at WSI airport and Canberra airport, which will be the first location in Australia to be serviced by DAS.

We completed the preliminary design review for the surface movement surveillance system in March 2024 and are working closely with our supplier to introduce the instrument landing system at WSI airport.

The construction on the Green Star-designed ARFF facility at WSI airport will commence in the first half of 2024–25. Our partner has also commenced production of hybrid fire fighting vehicles selected for their advanced safety and reduced environmental impact features for our ARFF services at WSI airport.

During the year we supported the Departmentled community consultation sessions for the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for the preliminary flightpath and airspace changes released in October 2023. In addition, following the release of the EIS, we supported the Department by reviewing the significant volume of submissions received during the process, with summary feedback published in May 2024. Following the approval of the EIS, Airservices will lead detailed design and implementation of the WSI airport flightpath and airspace, which will include further community engagement guided by our Community Engagement Standard.

1 An aircraft movement describes an aircraft departing or landing at an airport under Australian jurisdiction. Domestic flights are therefore counted as 2 movements while international flights are counted as one movement due to only departing or arriving at an Australian airport.

Uncrewed services

Preparing our skies for the safe integration of uncrewed services. We are investing to deliver first-of-its-kind, digital and automated capabilities and services that will foster growth of uncrewed aircraft in shared airspace. Collectively, these capabilities will shape the future of our entire air traffic management system, ensuring we are prepared to manage the increasing growth and complexity of new airspace users.

We will operationalise uncrewed services in Australian airspace through the design and deployment of a flight information management system (FIMS) with digital and automated capabilities. This will be the backbone of Australia’s uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) traffic management (UTM) ecosystem, delivering valuable data to match the needs of UAS operators, enhancing existing surveillance capabilities for detecting UAS around airports, and helping to safely manage airspace.

Achievements

In December 2023, we engaged our strategic partner for the delivery of foundational FIMS capabilities and are on track for delivery of these initial capabilities in late 2025.

In February 2024, we released our market analysis report ‘Sizing the future drone and advanced air mobility market in Australia’, containing projections for the growth of commercial drones and advanced air mobility in Australian skies over the next 2 decades. This has been a great source of information for industry, Government and Airservices to better understand expected growth.

We completed our concept of operations for an enhanced airspace surveillance service in partnership with external stakeholders including Defence, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (the Department) and the Australian Federal Police to monitor UAS operations in the vicinity of our 29 controlled airports.

We continued to focus on engaging industry stakeholders through the Uncrewed Services Advisory Network (USAN), which provides a key platform for direct industry engagement to ensure our uncrewed services align with industry expectations.

We established the Automated Airspace Authorisations (AAA) working group under the USAN to help inform the further rollout of the AAA trial capability to additional airports. This initiative is helping UAS operators by providing faster access to airspace around controlled airports, reducing processing times from weeks to seconds.

By taking a leading role in this evolving industry, we are ensuring our preparedness to manage the continued growth of uncrewed aircraft traffic in Australia safely and efficiently.

1 Source: Airservices 2023–24 Corporate Plan, page 21.

+ Calculated over the preceding 5 years.

# Annual forecast.

Analysis

Our financial performance remained challenging during the year, which resulted in a below target return on assets (RoA) due to our net loss after tax. This was primarily driven by continued volatility within the aviation industry and slower than expected domestic traffic recovery. In addition, we continued to invest heavily in infrastructure and frontline service improvements that will strengthen our service delivery in the medium to long term at the cost of profitability in the interim period.

Domestic traffic remained stable in the first half of the year but fell short of anticipated levels from December 2023 due to a slower recovery in business travel, lingering at 102% of pre-pandemic levels at the end of June 2024. As airlines expand domestic routes to meet demand, leisure travel is expected to improve in the next 12 months. However, there is uncertainty around the impact on competition and demand from airline collapses such as Bonza and Rex Airlines jet operations.

International traffic has continued to grow and accounted for 51% of our revenue for the financial year. It has stabilised at 93% of pre-pandemic levels which is consistent with forecast. From December 2023 we saw an increase in traffic from China, which has historically been our biggest inbound market. We expect Australian international air traffic to recover to pre-pandemic levels by 2024–25. However, the Australian aviation network continued to face substantial volatility in both domestic and international traffic, leading to increased uncertainty, such as Air Vanuatu suspending operations.

We have not increased our charges since July 2015, including a 2% reduction in 2019, equating to a 24% price reduction in real terms for our customers to 2023–24. We are currently engaging with our customers and the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) for modest price changes in the national interest. This will allow us to continue to fund our ongoing transformational investment programs and invest for future growth.

Key initiatives

Support services

Build new capabilities across our support services and bring new opportunities for our people as we provide a more scalable and streamlined support for our front-line services.

The back-office enabling services transformation (BEST) delivers a digitally enabled set of core business processes supported by a modern enterprise resource planning tool, improving the efficiency and efficacy of our enabling services.

Achievements

We commenced a detailed design for our enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes in February 2024. We successfully transitioned our assessments to a digital platform in June 2024 for a small group of air traffic services (ATS) students. The digital platform will improve efficiency in exam processing and results management and will be rolled out to all ATS students throughout 2024.

The BEST program continued to standardise and optimise existing processes and data structures, and digitise manual workflows – particularly in the ‘Hire to Retire’ space – setting the foundations for the future implementation of robust digital platforms.

1 Source: Airservices 2023–24 Corporate Plan, page 21.

2 Target for 2023–24 was 70 with long-term goal to improve engagement to be greater than 80 over time.

Analysis

Although the overall people engagement result did not meet our target, we have seen an improvement in participation rates, from 44% to more than 50% of employees. While we have more work to do to increase people engagement, the feedback received is valuable and reinforces the areas on which we need to focus. We have seen improvement in some areas, with the survey highlighting key strengths such as connection to purpose, employee wellbeing and safety.

During the financial year we continued to implement our Engagement and Participation Plan, with initiatives to support leaders to act on employee feedback, through tangible, practical leader-led initiatives. These include our Propel Leadership Program and introduction of employee focus groups which will support prioritisation and co-design of new initiatives. Leaders have been ‘action planning’ with their teams on how to improve the workplace experience at the local level. More than 40 leaders (40% from frontline operations) participated in formal sessions to share successes and best practice to improve employee engagement.

During 2022–23 we invited Elizabeth Broderick & Co. to facilitate a progress review of our culture journey and commitments 2 years after their initial findings. This progress report, Charting Cultural Transformation: A Progress Review of Airservices Cultural Reform Journey, was published in September 2023. While the progress review noted our commitment to progress and transparency, the key findings demonstrated that further work was required to create a more inclusive, respectful and safe work environment. As with the initial Broderick review, we have published the progress report in full and committed to implementing all recommendations.

Key initiatives

People and culture

People are our greatest asset and the key to our future success. We will enhance our offering as an employer of choice in a fast-paced digital world by revolutionising the employee lifecycle and attracting, retaining, and developing outstanding talent with digital capabilities. We will make sure our people are equipped to achieve our transformation goals and will strive to create an environment where people are proud to work – a place where everybody can reach their potential.

Leadership and culture: We aim to be a leading place to work in Australia, through promoting a safe and inclusive place to work, cultivating courageous and authentic leadership, and strategically optimising our workforce and talent.

Achievements

We continued to focus on transforming our culture and have made progress towards completing the recommendations and initiatives outlined in our Cultural Response Plan. We completed our recruitment campaign for an independent chairperson for the Cultural Reform Board (CRB), which attracted many high calibre candidates. Our newly appointed CRB Chair was announced publicly in August 2024 and will play a key role in the development and governance of future culture-change work.

We commenced an external and independent review of Safe Place, appointing an expert external advisor and
establishing a steering committee, guiding the review. Work is expected to conclude during the September 2024 quarter with recommendations to be considered by the Executive in October 2024. There will be extensive engagement across the organisation to increase transparency and build trust with our people.

We continued to invest in strengthening existing leadership capability, in addition to increasing the number of potential future leaders. Courses delivered included a new Aspiring Leaders program, psychological safety workshops and expansion of the Propel leadership program, which has been completed by 503 leaders across the organisation. These efforts will provide our leaders with the critical skills they need to lead through the complexity of change. We also launched an external online learning platform, providing curated learning paths and access to over 20,000 courses.

The focus on enhancing the wellbeing of our people continued with the launch of the ‘wellbeinghub’ and ‘wellness webinars’ series to embed our suite of wellbeing offerings. The wellbeing initiatives offer tools and resources to support the health, wellbeing and leadership of our people.

We implemented the peer assistance network (PAN), a peer support program that improves psychological safety, emotional support, risk identification and injury prevention. There are now 88 accredited volunteers, which exceeds the 1:35 industry benchmark. The PAN is a key pillar in our efforts to improve psychological safety.

Peer Assistance Network (PAN) Priority: peer support program

Wellbeing is a vital component of employee health and critical for fostering a healthy, productive and engaged workforce.

We focus on building strong peer relationships and fostering a culture of mutual assistance and understanding among employees, to create a positive and resilient work environment that drives organisational success. We encourage open communication to reduce feelings of isolation and ensure all employees feel valued and
supported.

PAN Priority is our peer support program that aims to improve psychological safety, emotional support, risk identification and injury prevention. Through a network of trained employees, the program acknowledges and uses the power of lived experience to support individual self-determination and have a positive influence on culture. Benefits of the program include reduction in absenteeism, improved retention and engagement, and support for recovery from mental injury.

We have 85 highly trained volunteers across the network, who provide support across the organisation, breaking down employment-related stigma and fostering a culture of connection and care – truly living up to our value of ‘work as one’.

Our volunteers

• provide confidential emotional support and expression
• provide confidential low-level psychological intervention
• conduct triage and facilitate pathways to professional help
• identify colleagues who may be at risk to themselves or others
• detect early wellbeing risks
• diffuse and debrief post critical incidents or potential
  critical incidents
• monitor the wellbeing of peers.

What’s next?

Airservices aspires to lead the aviation industry in workplace mental wellbeing and safety initiatives. We have partnered with CASA to develop a specialised arm of the network called Supportive Occupational Airservices Rehabilitation (SOAR) to support our people to stay at work and return to work in a safe and sustainable way. The SOAR program will form part of CASA’s medical framework where those who have reduced or no operational capacity will be provided wellbeing support through our PAN Priority network.

1 Source: Airservices 2023–24 Corporate Plan, page 21.

2 Target for 2023–24 was <10.0 with long-term goal to reduce TRIFR to less than 4 over time

3 Target for 2023–24 was <4.0 with long-term goal to reduce LTIFR to zero over time.

* Rolling 12 month result.

Analysis

Total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIFR) and lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) were both higher than target for 2023–24. A key contributing factor to the elevated injury rates within our workforce is the inherent physical requirements of some roles, particularly our physical field-based roles. Most injuries are associated with body stressing resulting from physical and operational training of our aviation rescue fire fighters.

Throughout the year we have focused on increasing the levels of injury reporting and on having a ‘humanistic’ approach to injuries. We have early intervention programs available that focus on people having rapid access to treatment while an injury is still minor. This reflects a positive reporting culture and is likely to be a contributing factor to the elevated rates we have experienced.

Our initiatives to reduce injuries and the associated risk factors that contribute to injuries have continued into 2023–24, including programs that will reduce injury through prevention and safety in design. These included identification of opportunities to reduce the impact of hazardous manual tasks such as through fleet redesign, facilities upgrades, review of personal protective clothing and equipment, and health and wellbeing programs designed to boost worker resilience and reduce the risk of musculoskeletal injuries. In addition to these changes to the physical workplace, we introduced a health and wellbeing initiative for aviation rescue fire fighters to provide increased health and strength, conditioning and fitness support, as well as a Psychosocial Risk Improvement Program to determine treatments at a system level based on data from multiple sources.

Key initiative

Aviation rescue fire fighting (ARFF) service capability uplift

Fit for growth: Refresh our ways of working to enhance the safety of our people, ensure we are financially and environmentally sustainable, yet scalable and flexible enough to cater for the evolving needs of the industry and our customers.

Achievements

The primary focus of this initiative is to develop a health and wellbeing program tailored to the needs of our fire fighters, which prioritises the safety of our people and provides holistic wellbeing offerings. We collaborated with research partners to establish a benchmark of the physical capacity requirements for our people relative to operational tasks, using research-based and scientifically validated metrics. We are assessing how this data can be used to mitigate injury risks and improve overall performance by enhancing team readiness.

In 2024, ARFF celebrated its 70th anniversary, marking 7 decades of dedication to aviation safety and excellence. This significant occasion is linked to another notable accomplishment – the completion of 100 recruit courses since the official count began in 1977.

Following World War II, numerous unofficial and unorganised emergency response teams operated at various airports. However, these teams did not constitute a dedicated fire service. In 1954, Air Marshal Richard Williams, the Director-General of the Department of Civil Aviation, issued a directive stating the need for a formally organised fire service. This directive marked the official inception of ARFF in Australia.

The inaugural recruit course took place some 20 years later, and since then we have consistently trained and equipped dedicated fire fighters to respond to emergencies. Each recruit is equipped with the highest level of skills and knowledge, and over the years these courses have evolved to incorporate award-winning fire fighting technology, response techniques and safety protocols.

As ARFF looks to the future, these milestones are a testament to Airservices’ continuous efforts to ensure the safety of the communities we serve. This is not just a celebration of the past but also a reaffirmation of ARFF’s ongoing mission to protect and serve with distinction, and to set new standards in aviation rescue and fire fighting for the decades to come.

1. Source: Airservices 2023–24 Corporate Plan, page 21.
2. Results are reported for the prior period due to the extensive time required to perform the calculation. For example, the calculation for the 2022–23 period was completed in December 2023 and is reported as the 2023–24 result.
3. The 2018–19 result reported in 2021–22 was set as baseline being the most recent non-COVID affected year of operations.
4. The 2022–23 result is the latest result available at the time of publication. These emissions do not include those of the aviation industry resulting from adjustments and efficiencies in flightpath design, or operational changes of Airservices. The result for the 2023–24 period will be available in late 2024.

Analysis

We continued to progress our aspiration to become net zero by 2050. We commenced a comprehensive review of our sustainability strategy with a particular focus on updating our existing carbon emissions targets. This review aims to align our carbon emission targets with the Commonwealth Net Zero targets. Additionally, we continue to incorporate climate change considerations more holistically into our strategy to ensure a resilient and forwardthinking approach.

Our environmental footprint (energy, waste and emissions profiles) result was calculated at 150,596 tCO2e. This is a 37.6.% reduction from our 2019 baseline figure of 241,510 tCO2e and is a 32% year-on-year reduction from the prior year result.

This reduction in emissions was mainly attributable to enhanced data quality and assessment. A small proportion of this reduction was also linked to the implementation of key initiatives to reduce electricity consumption at our facilities through the installation of more efficient equipment, and activation of solar electricity at our Brisbane Air Traffic Services Centre.

We demonstrate our commitment to environmental stewardship and our role in mitigating climate change by working towards a more ambitious target in the reduction of our carbon emissions. We are also integrating climate risk assessments and adaptation measures to better prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate change.

Key initiatives

Facilities and environment

Provide a safe, inclusive, engaging and sustainable work environment. Demonstrate our commitment to our people and the environment which contributes to overall engagement, and the importance of both in delivering our valued services. We will leverage technology and data to automate processes and improve the management of our facilities.

PFAS

PFAS management including wastewater management: Address the pollution legacy of our past use of fire fighting agents that contained per- and poly- fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

Achievements

We continued to develop comprehensive risk-based management actions and remediation strategies to address legacy impacts from the historic use of PFAS-containing Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) at our airport leased areas. To advise on what is required, site investigations have been initiated across 20 airports nationally, with nearly all investigations now coming to conclusion. Information from these investigations is allowing us to commence consideration of remedial action. The development of site-specific PFAS Remediation Action Plans for 8 of the aforementioned 20 sites; Avalon, Brisbane, Canberra, Karratha, Mackay, Melbourne, Perth and Rockhampton, are progressing. The Public Works Committee approved remediation works at the former fire training ground at Launceston in March 2024 and preparations are underway for on-ground works to facilitate the remediation commencing in August 2024. We have removed stockpiles of PFAS-impacted soil at the fire training grounds in Sydney, Avalon and Alice Springs. We completed wastewater trials across 3 separate sites and are progressing the installation of wastewater treatment at suitable locations during the second half of 2024.

Environmental sustainability

Reduce our total environmental footprint by minimising our resource usage, reducing emissions and adopting sustainable practices.

Achievements

We progressed our sustainability strategy to align our carbon emission targets to the Commonwealth Net Zero target. We continue to integrate climate risk assessments and adaptation measures to better prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate change, and to ensure we adopt a resilient and forward-thinking approach to all our activities. These include the implementation of additional user-preferred routes and noise monitoring data, continuous descent operations (predictable sequencing), hybrid fire trucks for WSI airport and use of solar at the new Brisbane Air Traffic Services Centre.

This significant change allows more flexibility for our airline customers to optimise routes for fuel efficiency and timely arrivals, while also reducing carbon emissions.

Our customers are increasingly taking advantage of this enhanced flexibility, adopting UPRs instead of the fixed published routes.

In the 2023–24 financial year, airlines had saved about 35,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) through UPRs. This is equivalent to the emissions associated with 3,200 typical flights between Sydney and Melbourne¹.

We are collaborating with air navigation service providers (ANSP) and airline operators from New Zealand, Indonesia, and Singapore to trial an initiative that will allow pilots on selected international flights to choose their own routes between destinations to take advantage of prevailing winds and shorten travel times, save fuel, and reduce carbon emissions.

In a significant development for cross-border collaboration, 4 ANSPs, as well as national flag carriers Qantas, Air New Zealand, Garuda Indonesia, and Singapore Airlines, have partnered to trial user-preferred routing on 38 different scheduled routes between Australian/New Zealand and Indonesian/Singaporean airspace.

As well as designating all Class A airspace as UPR airspace, we have established time-activated UPR exclusion zones in high-density areas. Further flight-path optimisation will be made available with the expansion of dynamic airborne reroute procedures (DARP) aligned to the delivery of the Civil Military Air Traffic Management System.

To simplify flight planning and reduce complexity, the future electronic Aeronautical Information Publication (eAIP) will incorporate off-air route planning ruleset modifications. These changes benefit both major carriers and smaller operators, allowing more efficient and environmentally conscious operations.

By enabling more efficient flights through expanded UPRs, we are actively working with airlines to drive environmental sustainability and operational efficiency in the aviation ecosystem.

1 Sydney/Melbourne flight comparison is based on a typical fuel burn of 3.5 metric tonnes in a B737.

1 Source: Airservices 2023–24 Corporate Plan, page 21.

* Rolling 12-month result

Analysis

Complainant numbers have increased at a greater rate than movements during the year on a 12-month rolling basis. This increase is primarily driven by Brisbane airport operations and the ongoing work to minimise noise impacts for communities. The ongoing increase in air traffic movements combined with concerns about the flightpath associated with Brisbane’s new parallel runway make up a significant portion of monthly complainant contact.

We have continued to proactively engage the Brisbane community on change options identified during 2023, moving these forward to detailed design and potential implementation. This included flightpath changes that will support greater use of simultaneous opposite direction parallel runway operations (SODPROPS) during daytime hours, and will more fairly share overland operations between the 2 runway communities when in contingency runway modes.

We are committed to increasing the use of SODPROPS mode as a priority where weather and operating conditions allow by 30 November 2024, in accordance with our Noise Action Plan for Brisbane and the ‘Air Services (Use of Simultaneous Opposite Direction Parallel Runway Operations at Brisbane Airport) Direction 2024’ from the Minister.

This will result in communities close to Brisbane Airport benefiting from greater use of SODPROPS mode where the final stage of departures and final stage of arrivals are over Moreton Bay.

We have seen a reduction in complaints investigations initiated by the ANO during the year and fewer actions resulting from the investigations.

Key initiatives

Community engagement

Transform our operations to be more resilient, clean, and reliable to provide better outcomes for our communities through innovative designs, intelligent systems, and best practice community engagement. Increase the capacity at our aerodromes to support the next 30 years of Australian economic growth, enabling an additional 73 million passenger movements per year.

We will deliver best practice community engagement in line with evolving community and societal expectations, and our community engagement standard. This includes engaging with communities on Perth and Melbourne proposed airport developments.

Achievements

During the year, we continued with initiatives to improve our community engagement practices and capabilities, applying these to the Brisbane Noise Action Plan and WSI airport environmental impact statement (EIS), which are our priorities.

In addition, we published our new Community Engagement Standard in September 2023, which outlines how Airservices will engage with the community on flightpath and airspace change proposals. The standard is the result of nationwide consultations with the community and industry. Around 560 people participated during the 8-week period, providing more than 800 individual comments which have been considered in the final standard. The new standard provides a clearly defined process for engaging with the public on flightpath and airspace changes of varying scope, scale, and complexity. Importantly, it establishes a benchmark to measure our performance against.

The standard is part of the ongoing evolution of our flightpath and airspace change community engagement practices, which commenced with the release of our flightpath design principles in October 2020 and our Community Engagement Framework in August 2021. It has been shaped by recent Aircraft Noise Ombudsman (ANO) findings, learnings from our engagement activities, feedback from the communities, and an independent review to identify global best-practice standards for community engagement. The new standard applies to all future engagements in addition to our ongoing program of flightpath and airspace changes.

During the year, we improved the information we provide via our noise and flightpath reporting tools, including expanding the coverage of WebTrak and providing more weather data to support community understanding of aircraft operations. Improvements were made to the Aircraft In Your Neighbourhood website to provide more information on complaints, complainant locations, and complaint themes.

Noise Action Plan for Brisbane

Identify opportunities to improve noise and operational outcomes in relation to Brisbane airport airspace changes, to inform future changes, and to contribute to the continual improvement of our flight-path and airspace change-management process.

Achievements

he Noise Action Plan for Brisbane has been a priority for us throughout 2023–2024. We have a dedicated team working on the development, assessment, and engagement on options responding to the 4 packages of work and 11 recommendations. We have progressed development of Package 3 options to reduce the frequency and concentration of operations on communities. Engagement on initial concepts will commence in August 2024. Work on Package 4 also commenced, which is reviewing the wider Brisbane airspace system.

During the year, we delivered improvements without requiring flightpath changes, which are subject to longer lead times. These include:

• removing early morning non-jet operations from new runway communities
• turning early morning non-jet aircraft after take-off to avoid legacy runway communities climbing over water instead.
• shifting over water departures to the west from the new runway to follow a pre-existing legacy runway flightpath and removing overflight of Bribie Island.
• expanded simultaneous opposite direction parallel runway operations (SODPROPS) hours on weekend mornings (6am to 8am) and Saturday evenings (8pm to 10pm).

We also delivered improved reporting on adherence to noise abatement procedures including SODPROPS use where conditions allow. More complex changes requiring new flightpaths will be delivered by 30 November 2024 to enable greater use of SODPROPS where weather and operating conditions allow.