Originally Posted by
eglnyt
Heading way off topic now. Not my decision to defend but those were very strange times. We now know how the future of aviation panned out but at the time pre vacs it didn't look anywhere near as positive. The furlough scheme offered a reprieve to many NATS jobs but it was quite clear that was going to run out long before income returned. NATS prioritised keeping it's validated controllers. Others were not so lucky. A large proportion of technical staff were on short term contracts through complex multi company contracts and they were let go straight away. NATS had long since outsourced many ancillary functions to organisations who weren't so good to their staff. A fair few NATS were made redundant although the terms were pretty good so they faired pretty well.
Yes and no, voluntary redundancy was taken by all (bar one) volunteers. The £1.5m debt financing prevented the culling of any non-volunteers - and NATS is already well back into 'feast and famine' of controllers.
The subjects may change a little, but the theme throughout is identical, NATS is taking no blame at all for a catastrophic systems failure, that even you accept was inevitable - I suppose complexity will fool the tabloids.