Originally Posted by chevvron
The CAA required all aerodrome authorities to provide their own equipment sometime in the '80s.....
Not strictly true, well, absolute rubbish actually. When ANS provision became a real open market, and airports, particularly the larger ones, realised they might be able to get a better deal than they did from their current contractors, contract renewals (or just invitations for expressions of interest) were opened to bids.
Most airports viewed changing providers as too great a business risk and just carried on with whoever they had. Then one airport decided to change provider. As I recall, they ended their contract with at big ANSP that they had used for years, which was a bit of an anomaly anyway being a small operation, and decided to run their own services. The night the old provider left, they took pretty much all the important equipment with them - next morning providing a service was a bit tricky. I have no idea what the contracts between the airport and the ANSP said, indeed I suspect that there were few documents that we would recognise as service provision contracts these days describing the terms, and I think the airport was rather surprised because they didn't expect the kit to disappear.
More taken by surprise was the CAA/SRG because this had not been considered when competition between service providers was brought into the regulatory framework, and when the airport phoned up to say 'what can we do?' there was no ready answer. Arguably, one might say that it was a business issue and of no concern for the
safety regulator, but the CAA also had some responsibilities for assuring continuity of service so it became a CAA/SRG matter. The outcome, as I recall, was guidance to airports to ensure that equipment (and a number of other aspects) should be included in contract negotiations and that airports might like to consider being the 'owners' of equipment, especially as existing equipment reached end of life and were renewed.
There was a requirement introduced around the same time that operational procedures - and particularly the MATS Part 2 - must be transferred to the new provider. This was problematic because some ANSPs, those either with much experience in contract service provision or with sizeable legal departments, claimed that the procedures/MATS 2 were copyright and had IPR value. I'm not sure how that argument panned out - I think the CAA's legal department view was that the courts could decide if it became necessary.
I know one or two airports did buy some of their own ANS equipment, but I don't think it became a common practise. I imagine that better contracts and planning for changes could manage the problem without the airport incurring capital/leasing costs themselves if it wasn't necessary.
I am well out of the way things are done in the UK these days but it clearly is possible to change ANSP at a major airport successfully - it's been done at Gatwick and Birmingham, although there are differing views about the degree of success
. At Birmingham, where the airport took over directly service provision, they probably made the wise choice of employing an ex-CAA inspector to be the unit manager - the manager was then more likely to be able to navigate all of the CAA requirements.
But back to the original point - I'm not aware of how things happen these days but I don't think you'll many airports that contract out ANS service provision own much of the ANS kit.