Originally Posted by
Hotel Tango
Jonty, you're getting way out of your depth now. If there are no written procedures for such eventualities, controllers cannot just go ahead and basically make them up as they go. Just imagine the legal implications, not to mention the public outcry, if something went pear shape which resulted in a mid air right over the city of Birmingham (seeing as 15 was in use apparently)! If the system is out and no procedural back-up exists, diversion is the only safe and legal option.
HT you have identified the problem. The reason for all the delays and diversions is that BHX has had nobody develop contingency procedures for what should be an extremely simple exigency to handle. Yes, previous posters are correct there has been deskilling in ATC that matches the deskilling in the cockpit. But it has got to a level that beggars belief that you can have aircraft all in a neat stack with R/T and you have all the airport details and capability yet cannot allow them to make approaches to land?
This is an airport and possibly a NATS UK Ltd failure to be able to cope with a relatively trivial non-nominal occurrence.