"To suggest that GA is an exclusive user (or even "almost" exclusive user) of lower airspace OCAS is bizarre."
I was very careful to use the words I did becasue I suspected someone could not resist making this point. If you beleive that sufficient high speed military sorties are flown each year in these budget challenged times to make the forces a significant user of lower airspace relative to total movements per year then you have different information to me.
"NATS' (or more correctly AIS' in this instance) "customer" is the CAA."
Really.
In the same way I suppose the NHS's customer is the DoH or a PLC its shareholders.
I really must remember next time I see my doctor that I am not his customer.
The CAA pays the bills in the same way PLC's shareholders provide the capital.
Any organisation that provides a service has a duty of care to ensure that service meets the needs of its end user. In the commercial world if it fails to do so it goes bust. If NATS had to survive in the comercial world it would have gone bust long ago.
The AIS has a duty to the CAA to tell them the service it is providing is inadequate. The CAA has a similiar duty to ensure it is getting value for money and the service that it has contracted is the one needed.
As I have said before, I am entirely happy the AIS go on providing an inadequate service to their customers which fails to provide the service needed whilst watching infringements increase each year and whilst argueing that they are doing what their funder requires of them.
However, asking how that service can been improved is an entirely pointless excercise because I will not be convinced that fiddling around with the user interface will have the slightest impact on GA reviewing the NOTAMs before every flight.
I hope there is never a serious incident becasue someone hasnt read the NOTAMS but should I be proved wrong I am very glad I shall not be the person from the AIS telling the relatives that we did all that was asked of us by our customers.
Last edited by Fuji Abound; 17th Jul 2006 at 07:53.