Inside the Qantas nerve centre as Middle East war causes traffic jam in the skies
Qantas Chief Risk Officer Andrew Monaghan said that the increase in the conflict in the Middle East has been “more important and more frequent” since the attacks of Hamas in Israel on 7 October 2023.
“We do things more often in terms of risk assessment,” he said. “Since the presence of the airspace is limited, there is more efforts to enter.”
Qantas Chief Risk Responsible Andrew Monaghan (left), President of the Integrated Operations Center Ben Holland and Director Scott Fenwick.Credit: Steven Siewert
Monaghan said the airline’s security experts believe that the Middle East has been experiencing the most military activity since the 1980s.
However, he stressed that Qantas received a “conservative risk perspective ve and attracted multiple sources of intelligence and information to inform him while using multi -layer processes to manage situations.
One day after freedom, the integrated operation center (IOC) is an activity hive. High Winds reduced Sydney Airport to a single -transit operation on Wednesday and caused flight delays due to the halves of the plane.
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For a 24 -hour period, there are about 150 people in the center in various shifts. The screens sort the walls of the center in a room that seems to be almost half the floor. All of the IOC has a labor force of 450 people.
Holland, who is an A330 pilot, said that the Nerve Operation Center is responsible for the game plan for 350 flights every day. “We take the program and set this considering the conditions of the day. The FrontLine team then runs this game plan – the flight crew, the cabin team, engineers for this 350 flights,” he said.
“We try to build the game plan as much as possible. They go out and run it and then we work together to manage any disruption.”
Richard Woodward, a former Qantas A380 captain, said that situations such as in the Middle East are generally “very fluent ve and the guidance decision was a balance between the first -hand information about the IOC and the crew.
“IOC will offer a very strong choice for which airport they want to go because they want to go to the airport because they can turn the ground support, accommodation for passengers, engineering capability and jet.
On Tuesday morning, Iran was directed to a US base in Qatar, while the flights were directed to the Gulf.Credit: Flight Radar 24
“This is a negotiation with a strong advice from IOC.
Woodward, a former RAAF test pilot, said that the final decision on guiding or taking other measures is under the regulations of the captain’s civil aviation arrangements. During his decades of career, the Qantas A380s and Boeing 747s between Australia and London, which included avoiding conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine.
