Whilst I appreciate how handy the GA community find the use of VORs for en-route nav, if they pay NOTHING towards their upkeep, should VORs be de-comissioned, how could they complain?
P7
Ahh, the NATS commercial viewpoint. But the UK as a State has an obligation to provide a navigational infrastructure for its airspace users - it signed up to this in the ICAO convention. Perhaps the Government did not pass on this obligation in the NATS licence to provide services....or maybe NATS needs to look at the conditions on the licence.
I have no problem with NATS being a commercial organisation, or the users pays concept, but that does not mean that all other considerations go out of the window! That's one of the reasons we have regulators. In this case however, if i understand it correctly, it was the regulator who agreed to the Eurocontrol plan without consulting all of the airspace users.