The departures hall at the Beirut international airport. (Credit: AFP)
BEIRUT — Air traffic controllers attached to Lebanon's General Directorate of Civil Aviation announced Tuesday evening in a statement that a roadmap to resolve the staffing problems afflicting the profession had been adopted following a meeting with management and air navigation services at the Beirut international airport.
The roadmap includes: "accelerating the implementation and funding of the training program" for new air traffic controller assistants; placing on the agenda of the next cabinet meeting a decree for the recruitment of candidates who have passed the examinations organized by the Civil Service Council in 2018 to recruit these new assistants; and lastly, the temporary recruitment of approved controllers until the new recruits are operational.
Air traffic controllers confirmed they are abandoning plans to limit working hours to 13 hours a day as of Sept. 5, as announced in a press release issued on Aug. 24. In the Aug. 24 text, these professionals complained in particular about the melting of their workforce at all the posts to which they are supposed to be assigned, indicating that there are now only 13 people working where there should be almost 90, according to the information reported at the time by the al-Markaziya news agency. L'Orient-Le Jour attempted to contact the director general of civil aviation, Fadi el-Hassan, to confirm the information cited by al-Markaziya, but had received no response at the time of publication.
Contacted by L'Orient Today at the time of the press release, Hassan assured that the airport would remain operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
A few days earlier, an audit report by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) had leaked to the press. It revealed shortcomings in the Beirut airport's communications, navigation and other services.
Problems with air traffic control in Lebanon periodically return to the headlines and have worsened since the country's unprecedented economic and financial crisis in 2019. The role of air traffic controllers is all the more crucial as activity at the Beirut international airport has been recovering since 2022, after having been seriously affected by global restrictions to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.