Originally Posted by
Lissart
Thanks again.
Chevvron rightly points out some of the problems with ATCO availability. It does not help now only having the one private ATC training college. I still maintain that one of the biggest single risks to the Manston project could well turn out to be a lack of ATCO's,e specially as Greenfield vaildations will be needed, ruling out in the first case, ab-initio's. All that money, all that effort and struggle and they can't operate as envisaged because of a lack of controllers!
Greenfield validations shouldn't be a problem; one of the ex Manston controllers recently circulated his CV so he's 'on the market' and you only need one to start with.
I was tentatively approved for a greenfield validation at Dunsfold back in 2012 based on the fact I used to operate close by at Farnborough and I had held an ADV/ADI validation up to 4 years previously.
The plan was to be I would do ADV/ADI on my own with other controllers 'observing', then after about 4 weeks, with CAA approval I could start training the other controllers; that is probably how it would be done at Manston. I had already held 'greenfield' validations 6 times for 'special events' so the CAA inspectors were aware of my record.