It's almost time to announce the results of the Nats airport (and center) lottery/Bingo grading game - so get your numbers ready!
For those that don't know, Nats pay grades at airports looks set to change from Atco 2 and Atco 3, to Atco 0 - Atco 5, where 0 is the lowest band, and 5 is the highest. The grades will change for London, Manc and scottish too of course...
And how have they decided who gets what? Well, it's the patented Nats Formula Bingo game. (Based on an American model...) Pay will be related to how complicated or busy the workload at a unit is. It's all come about from Stansted getting as busy as Gatwick was when they got bumped up a grade.
The thing is, the results aren't quite as expected. The college came out with the highest complexity (!) while Birmingham got a much higher score than Stansted. Southampton got quite a high score as well, though it remains in band 1, with City (tower only), Luton (tower only) and Farnborough (Tower, Approach, and Lars).
However, a closer inspection of how the scores was reached has raised some issues. For Farnborough, the tower movements are at about 150 or so a day - but there is scope to almost double that within the council limits. There is no controlled airspace either (the only nats airport without it). However there are another 75000 Lars movements, and approach movements for at least 4 other airfields. All these radar movements have been ignored in the scoring of the unit, as has the airshow, as they are apparently "non-quantifiable". Full statistics, including numbers of Fis, Ris and Ras is available, as well as numbers for a few thousand airshow movements. As there is no controlled airspace, you can't just ignore the Fis traffic when vectoring inbounds, or the other 100 or so unknowns.
It's the fact that so much work is being ignored that is the problem, rather than how much money everyone else will get. Morale has plummeted. Being a small unit also means working 6 on, 3 off, which means 30 more days at work a year than a 6 on, 4 off unit. Everyone has extra jobs too, that are not paid for, so that the unit runs smoothly, as there is just a manager ATS, and one admin officer, plus 3 watches and the ATSAs (which are in short supply)
It turns out that London city got a much higher score than Farnborough because of this, as did Southampton and Luton. Is it right that a tower only unit gets a much higher score than a tower and multiple radar unit with a similar number of tower movements, and thousands more radar movements?
The next band will prob be the scottish airports with Cardiff, and then the next band is birmingham and stansted, followed by Gatwick and Manc, and then the ATCO 5 units are Heathrow, Nerc, TC, Scottish, Manc area and the college.
We're told that no-one will lose money, but that it will be a lot easier to earn more money by moving to a higher graded unit. They will make it easier to move from unit to unit. Will anyone want to work at the bottom?
Of course, there will be bigger gaps between the bands, especially at the top. Expect pay rises to show this... And the scores will be re-evaluated every 3 years. So if Easyjet and Ryanair go bust, expect stansted to drop from atco 3 to atco 1.
So what do you all think of this? Is it fair? While this (rather long) post is a slight rant for having most of my work ignored, I'm not completely against the whole idea. Well, not so sure about the college complexity issues...!
There's lots more info too, but this will do for now. I suspect it will come out in the pay offer. Anyway, post what you think, or what the feelings at your unit are about it...
Farny Burrow.
