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NATIONAL AIR TRAFFIC
SERVICES Four aircraft made the early take off to arrive at Lee by 1000 ( Nigel de Candole, Tony Ashmeade, Pat Mountain and Peter Lovegrove) and the 6 occupants then processed to Swanwick to join the rest of the party for the visit to NATS. Each of the 17 squadron members was individually "electronically tagged" so that "Big Brother" would know our exact whereabouts during the visit - scary! We were met by our host, Cdr Peter Goss RN NLS ( No Longer Serving apparently, whatever happened to Rtd!), briefed on how to negotiate the electronic barriers and taken to a briefing room for coffee where Micky Brock, ex Sea Vixens and a friend of the Boss's joined the party. Already we were amazed at the palatial building we had entered and as the presentation by Peter commenced we continued to be impressed by all he had to say. NATS we were told is a functioning PPP (Public Private Partnership) with 49% owned by Government, 46% by a grouping of Airlines and the remaining 5% by the workforce. It is the largest Air Traffic Centre in Europe covering en-route Oceanic & UK traffic, Military traffic and the London TMA although at present some of these functions are still carried out by West Drayton. NATS is also responsible for the ATC at most of the major Airports and is seeking to expand this function. We were told that the centre handled 2 million aircraft movements per year with 350,000 coming through the Oceanic Area. Each aircraft operator was billed for NATS services according to aircraft weight/size and the time spent in UK Airspace. The small aircraft, cross channel operator, flying from southern airports in the most congested airspace and requiring most input from the controllers therefore seemed to get best value for money as the "big boys" paid more and were in the airspace a lot longer. Apparently Heathrow has 85 movements per hour and Gatwick with only the one runway manages 48. We then went to
the viewing gallery to see the vast Operations Room - palatial is not
the word to describe this huge workspace - a stress free working environment
being the major design requirement! The airspace is divided into sectors
and each sector is manned by an Assistant who feeds in the flight planning
strips (yes still on paper!), a Planner who accepts or rejects the aircraft
and a Controller who actually controls the aircraft. Each sector handles
between 28 and 32 aircraft per hour and the controllers have a 30 minute
break every 1 hour 20 minutes. It is obvious that "stress free"
working is the aim and the on watch team certainly gave the feeling
of being very efficient whilst remaining "cool !!". The Centre
has 500 Control Staff, half of them female, and they are employed in
5 watches, so plenty of free time to run that second business? Next
we were taken down into the Ops Room and introduced to the GA Flight
Information Controller, an entirely procedural service with no radar
input. This was followed by "hands on" time at some spare
screens which were running a training programme. The final visit was
to the technical control/ fault diagnosis team responsible for radar
feeds, radio transmitters/receivers, radar consoles, power supplies
etc. A final question
session was held during which Peter explained the salary scheme for
Controllers and was immediately offered the services of the majority
in the room! Apparently we are all too old!! Our thanks go to Peter
Goss who had given us such an excellent presentation and tour of the
Swanwick Centre in his free time, also to Nigel and Phil who had done
all the "arranging." Report by John Eatwell |
Click on Image to enlarge.
