chevvron wrote:Be interested to know why NATS have formed yet another company; is it so that controllers with just ADI/ADV ratings can go on a different salary scale to those with APS ratings or simply splitting the ATC side with the engineering side?
NATS Solutions is a subsidiary of NATS Services and was incorporated circa 2014 to transfer into the NATS fold staff from some other smaller, previously non NATS, units and operates with different staff T&Cs to Services and NERL.
What with this move to use Solutions at Gatwick rather than Services, plus staff in the wider NERL/Services world recently entering a formal trade dispute with the company as it chooses to walk away unilaterally from a number of employee/employer industrial agreements, there are interesting times ahead.
Does any of this mean anything to GA pilots here though?
Yes, it does. The chances of you ever seeing the integrated seamless UK ATC service you would like GA to have fair and equal access to are further less than zero than they’ve ever been. The business model of the main air traffic control service provider the country has chosen to operate is based purely upon minimising costs to the airlines whilst maximising profit to the shareholders (who also include the airlines). As it now seeks to start tackling more aggressively, in an industrial relations sense, its biggest cost (staff), services to users on the periphery of the airline core, except where required by law or licence, seem somewhat superfluous.
UK ATC and the operation of what should be a freely available piece of national infrastructure, the airspace above you, is broken. It’s so broken and fragmented that the biggest ANSP in the country is now operating services in full or in part by utilising at least four different entities that I can think of, never mind all the other providers available. How, within such a structure, can there ever be anything other than a disjointed and disconnected mess?
It’s a joke.