The concern related to fatigue caused by the lack of availability within the organisation to take annual leave when required due to current staffing levels.
The reporter expressed a safety concern regarding the lack of annual leave availability within the organisation. The reporter stated that a number of staff members have tried to take annual leave within the past two years and have been unable to do so for extended periods of time due to the staffing levels within the organisation.
The reporter is concerned that staff members, all of whom are professional and take all reasonable steps to ensure they are well rested and both physically and mentally prepared for work, are unable to take leave to enable them to retain this position. Not being able to access annual leave results in fatigue related issues which the reporter has observed on the flight deck.
The reporter has also stated that the 15 minutes which the flight crew is allocated for flight planning is insufficient. This means that flight crew generally begin their flight duty before the allocated time and generally means that they are not having the minimum required rest time.
No response was received from the operator.
CASA has noted the REPCON report. Matters such as those raised in the report are incorporated into CASA's monitoring of airline operators, including audit and surveillance activity. CASA will cover both the leave issue and the flight planning issue in the operator's annual audit activity scheduled for later this year.