Originally Posted by chevvron
Makes you wonder why NATS sold HIAL in the first place.
They never actually sold it and it was also a part of the CAA rather than NATS. In 1986 the CAA tried to sell off the group for a penny. Although there were companies interested in the money making airports at Inverness and Sumburgh, the deal was all the airports, which as a whole just about broke even due to subsidies.
In order to cut costs the group became known as HIAL, a wholly owned subsidiary of the CAA. This allowed them to employ staff on different contracts to CAA/NATS staff (my basic ATCO wage when I left 10 years or so ago was about £18K). To a certain extent this worked well because the company could still take NATS staff (who were interested) to plug any staff shortages, although there was no right of movement the other way.
The big problem arose though when the privitisation of CAA/NATS became part of the agenda. There was absolutely no way this could happen when part of the company was attracting large subsidies from both the UK Government and the EU. Hence ownership of the company was passed from the CAA to the Scottish Office.