Inside the Qantas nerve centre as war causes traffic jams in the sky

Sydney Morning Herald

4 days ago

Qantas chief risk officer Andrew Monaghan said escalation of conflict in the Middle East had started to become 'more significant and more frequent' since the attacks by Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023.
'We're doing things more frequently in terms of risk assessment,' he said. 'There's just more effort that has to go into it because the availability of airspace is limited.'
Monaghan said the airline's security experts believed the Middle East was experiencing the most military activity since the 1980s.
However, he emphasised that Qantas took a 'conservative risk perspective', and drew on multiple sources of intelligence and information to inform it, while using multi-layered processes to manage situations.
A day after the diversions, the integrated operations centre (IOC) is a hive of activity. High winds reduced Sydney Airport to a single-runway operation on Wednesday, causing flight delays due to a halving of aircraft being able to land.
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Over a 24-hour period, the centre is staffed by about 150 people who work various shifts. Screens line the centre's walls in a room that seems to take up nearly half a floor. All up, the IOC has a 450-strong workforce.
Holland, himself an A330 pilot, said the nerve centre for operations was responsible for the game plan for 350 flights each day. 'We take the schedule, and we adjust it given the circumstances on the day. The frontline team then execute that game plan – the flight crew, the cabin crew, the engineers for those 350 flights,' he said.
'We try and set up the game plan as best possible. They go out and execute it, and then we work together to manage any disruption.'
A former Qantas A380 captain, Richard Woodward, said situations such as those in the Middle East were often 'very fluid', and any decision to divert was a balance between advice from the IOC and the crew's first-hand knowledge of the situation.
'The IOC will offer a very strong preference about which airfield they would like you to go to because of ground support, accommodation for passengers, engineering capability and whether they can turn the jet around. In an A380, you have to consider alternative airfields and their ability to handle them,' he said.
'It is a joint negotiation with strong advisory from the IOC. The airline will go out of its way to avoid conflict zones.'
Woodward, who is also a former RAAF test pilot, said the ultimate decision to divert or take other measures was the captain's under civil aviation regulations. He flew Qantas A380s and Boeing 747s between Australia and London during his decades-long career, which involved avoiding conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine during his time.