Originally Posted by
2 sheds
A bit of a straw man justification IMHO.They jolly well should validate, given that they had already been on the unit for however many years prior to Atco training. The other side of the same coin was that there was no guarantee of the extent of their appreciation, and in many cases a very parochial outlook.
2 s
Not dissimilar to the on unit training that the CAA asked of their cadets, though? Some may have had a couple of years, but for others it was a matter of months, as it depended on course availability & operational need. I believe in the 60s & 70s cadets were required to validate before progressing to the next rating stage, which seems similar. I seem to recall some of those (I detest the term "non state") airports even hosted cadets for for that training. Bearing in mind those who were ATSAs were working at that, as well as training as ATCOs, & were often tasked with other roles across the airport business, I'm not sure what appreciation was missed out on. I'd suggest some probably had a better understanding of the aviation world, than those who's entire experience was based on college & then posting to a single unit. The licence examinations were the same, & parochialism occurs within all ATC units, even now, so I'm not convinced that stacks up.