RAF ATC - suggested solutions
Pontius Navigator
Having spent nearly 30 years as an RAF air trafficker, I think your recent post deserves a response.
There have always been problems with recruiting and retention in air traffic, for two simple reasons, firstly an absence of any form of specialist pay (why put up with all the hassle when you can earn the same and get promoted far quicker in almost any other ground branch), secondly the lack of any form of structured crossover training to a civil ATC licence.
The absence of specialist pay is due entirely to the inability of those in high places to neither recognise the need, nor wish to set a precedent from the ‘all of one company syndrome’. The absence of crossover training is almost entirely due to the inability of certain senior ATC officers who refused to even attempt to understand the benefits and consequently never really pressed for such a system to be implemented, despite a number of overtures from SRG. The work being undertaken now by HR is welcome, but will probably be too little and too late.
The suggestion that military ATC in the UK could be contractorised to a civilian organisation is interesting, I take it you don’t recall what happened when this was tried at Boscombe Down? Firstly, comparable civilian controllers will cost more and secondly where would you find them? Currently, NATS cannot recruit, train and retain enough staff to man their own units and are already ‘poaching’ as many staff as they can from the RAF in an attempt to solve their problems. Also, there is no ‘pool’ of competent licensed civil controllers sitting around just waiting for a job to come along, if they’re any use, they’re already in work and are unlikely to be tempted to work in the kind of free-for-all operations in the open FIR that characterises RAF ATC – particularly for the sort of money that would be on offer.
The real threat to current RAF ATC is not actually a serious lack of numbers, although current trends do give cause for concern and options to address the shortfall are being considered. The real threat is actually the extremely low levels of experience at RAF ATC units, which has just got continually worse over the years and yet is just ignored as long as the ‘numbers’ stack-up. Nothing will ever change until the real issues of some form of specialist pay and cross-over training are addressed, but these cost money, so it’s much easier to adopt the same policy that has always been employed – ignore the problem, hope that no incidents take place which could be a result of inexperience and then with any luck it’ll all go away.