Originally Posted by
NW07
Many thanks for your replies. Surprising to hear that if one had worked at the unit as an assistant for some time and achieved a student licence, that they still struggled to validate. I could understand it more if they were completely new to the unit, especially a busy one.
Chevvron, yes I believe Biggin did have unlicensed ATCO’s as well as Hamble. I wonder what the route was to that? I presume in those days there was no air ground communication service? So I guess, before FISO’s came in, the only options were licenced/unlicened ATCO’s or nothing, did we even have safetycom then?
Thanks,
Nick
Hamble only had licensed ATCOs. I started my career there as an ATCA, got the practical time in and took the licence Technical/TWR/APP exams before moving on to greater things. It did help that I had on my doorstep the CAT groundschool and all the help that I could ever wish for to get MET & NAV under my belt. Never did understand why we had to do CPL standard NAV plotting as part of the NAV exam. The NAV plotting exam was the last time that I ever had to use that skill.
They did come up with an innovation pre-ATIS days, to have non ATCOs provide departure information rather than clog up the TWR frequency. With at its peak doing 100,000 movments per year the TWR frequency was quite a busy place.