This is going to be my last post in this thread, hopefully.
I don’t see how criticizing ATC is going to resolve any problems. I can only speak from my experience, and that experience, as I have said, is that both UK and Spanish ATC is very safe. My few thousand hours of flying experience might not be what a 65 year old 747 Capitan has, but I can assure you that I have flown in many more countries than 98 percent of the people in this forum.
We, in Europe, are all very lucky to have such a good ATC system. Although in my opinion it doesn’t compare at all to the US system, I think it’s a far improvement from many other parts of the world. In my modest opinion, the best controllers in the world are those at the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. But let’s leave that for another thread.
anotherthing:
First let me tell you that the London TMA controllers do a fine job, and all I can say is that I truly respect the job that you do.
I have to highlight something you said because it truly concerns me.
“These are poeple that in many cases, failed to validate with NATS. Yet very often, these minor aerodromes can be as, if not more, complex than the big airports because of the huge mixture of traffic they have.”
You must know the volume of VIP and BA146 traffic that land constantly at Southend. I would like to hear you explain to those pilots why a controller that failed to validate any kind of ATC license can still be guiding them around the sky. Like I said before, landing one airplane on top of another airplane has absolutely no excuse, regardless of the country in which it occurs. I have only seen this happen one time, and it was in the UK.
Every country has ATC issues because it is designed and handled by humans, mistakes will be made. If Spanish ATC was as bad as people make it seem, it would be obvious by the accident statistics, and this is evidently not the case.
F/Sgt Bell:
ATC is there to provide separation between aircraft, not to reduce the number of times you have to level off in the climb to FL350.
Flight with minimum ATC almost exist today, it’s called ADSB. I participated in a testing program for the system, and I can tell you it will be the future. Well programmed computers make far less mistakes than humans.
I hope I didn’t insult anyone. If anyone hates me after my comments, please send me a private message and we can hold a polite debate. I should have been a lawyer.