Originally Posted by
LookingForAJob
I'm afraid the idea that you can take someone off the street and have them fully qualified - whatever you mean by that - at a major airport in a year and a half is worrying.
Dude, I am sorry to disappoint you but this is normally how long it takes to train an air traffic controller all the way from scratch to being qualified to do the job by themselves. In most parts of the world it is like that. With NATS in the UK it is like that which is perfect to qualify good air traffic controllers. nats.aero states that:
"The basic course lasts around two months, at which point you’ll be told whether you’re following the path of an Area Controller or an Aerodrome/Approach Controller. (This decision will be related to your particular aptitude and the business requirements at the time.) Area students continue for another nine months, Aerodrome students for five months and Aerodrome/Approach students for eight. These are minimum timescales and the process can sometimes take longer if the business requires it or you need to repeat an element of the course." So at a very maximum, a trainee will be qualified to work this job in two years.
Training for air traffic control is different than training for a pilot. Not to say that the pilot job is more difficult or vice versa, but it is just the nature of these jobs are different, so the training timescale and the training methods differ between the two.
And no the purpose of system in Bahrain is not to produce far better experienced controllers in the long run, nor it is done because technology will take over the business in the future. It is done deliberately to stall and underpay local air traffic controllers for political reasons. In a logical sense, how would you produce better experienced local controllers in the long run if you stall an ATC prospect for 5 or 6 years until they are qualified to do this job. If anything this will decrease the motivation for those young guys to become more interested in this job and eventually repel them away from it as they are not earning any knowledge and taking too long to blossom into air traffic controllers.