Spent this afternoon with one of Spains chief ATC bods (25 yrs in the job all over spain) and an instructor and mentioned I had been reading this thread last night. He said he wasn´t surprised and hoped I would put his points of view accross:
1, Increase in incident reports at BCN has been 3x - 5x the normal over the last 3 mths
2, Madrids taxiways are airport design and have nothing to do with ATC
3, Spanish language - Why not to other Spanish speakers. In his words "If it increases clarity thats got to be good for dafety"
Now the interesting part:
In this gentlemans opinion Aena made a big mistake 10 years ago by deciding to invest in keeping the ATCO´s it had rather than getting new blood in. This has led to a situation where older and more experienced ATCO´s have been kept in the job whilst traffic has increased at exactly the time that reaction times are slower for an aging workforce. Aena is now taking on a lot of new controllers but who wants the job when the older buys are family men looking to work the "comfortable shifts"? As such new ATCO´s are thrust into the deap end at the larger airports and this is causing the experiencelevel to drop where it is most necessary. Quality candidates are shying away from the job as although paying well by Spanish standards they know they will have the crappy shift patterns and be in a company that has previously showed it wants to wring as many years as possible from its ATCO´s....
Personally I can see where he is coming from as a lot of Spain works on the "years in" system where the more senior you are the greater choice in shifts / location and positions you have. Why would an experienced guy who came to Madrid or BCN back in his twenties not take the opportunity to move back to his home town / region where living costs are a third of these two cities?
I´m actually on the maint side of things so I can´t elaborate further but it did prove interesting to hear the other side of the coin...