UndervaluedATC, I loved your statement:
the fact that ATCO's move the traffic and collect the Avcharges that makes most of the money for AsA …
This is a truism and why, if it were my business, the ATCs would be Kings and Queens. You are the income producers in the business – virtually everything else is ancillary. That is why I cannot understand if the Airservices management is skimping on your training and employment numbers.
Basically, Airservices is an air traffic control organisation which makes its profits from moving big planes safely and expeditiously. It loses money on small planes so it should minimise the services to these while still maintaining high safety levels.
When I owned Dick Smith Electronics, the people behind the counter were the Kings and Queens. They were the ones I kept well paid, and always had adequate staffing levels. That is where the income came from. At Australian Geographic it was the journalists and the photographers who were the Kings and Queens. I always kept them on side and paid them well, because that was the whole success of the business.
For an organisation like Airservices to get so many of its air traffic controllers offside is not very astute in my view.