Bear with me on this.....
As you may or may not know, Farnborough is one of the busiest LARS units in the country, if not the busiest. It's controllers are also employed by National Air Traffic Services (NATS). These controllers are facing a restructure of their pay according to the levels of traffic they work.
Now from a controller's point of view, Farnborough has some of the most demanding airspace in the country, responsible as it is for a large Class G chunk of airspace, and looking after IFR jet traffic receiving a RIS or RAS not only in and out of itself, but also the adjacent civilian airfields. In other words, this is one of the best opportunities in the ATC community of having an incident and potentially losing your air traffic licence. But it has been decided that LARS movements will be excluded in calculating this restructure, and consequently Farnborough has been placed at the bottom of the pile because only it's aerodrome movements are being taken into account.
So how does this concern pilots? Well, it is possible, just possible, that because of this Farnborough may lose LARS, or rather, give it up. Why? Although the controllers there enjoy providing LARS (well, most of them, most of the time so I understand), what is the point when they're not being recognised for it? If you care, then write to NATS (
www.nats.co.uk) but more importantly, write to Prospect. This is the union, that is supposed to stand up for its members, that has brokered this deal. Tell them what you think of LARS and (hopefully) how it important it is to you. LARS is being sidelined again, is this another nail in its coffin?
www.prospect.org.uk or:
Prospect, NATS ATCOs Branch, Prospect House, 75-79 York Road, London, SE1 7AQ