anotherthing, I think you misunderstand me - maybe I didn't make myself clear - if so I apologise - I was just smiling at the whole sentence from UKAB which seemed to suggest that the name of the game was to prevent TCAS and STCA alerts ... and that NATS had done their bit (end of).
Of course I wasn't recommending that maintaining 4000fpm v/s within 1000ft of cleared level was a good thing
And as for wordcounts in press releases, I wasn't talking about press releases. I was talking about
all documents published by your regulator which actually if interested parties were to Google with more cunning than alacrity might soon put a lot of your company's management under more effective public scrutiny (a good thing). We are able to do it thanks mostly to the Freedom Of Information Act - a statute from which NATS is probably exempt, but thank goodness your regulator is not.
I am sure very few reading this thread are interested in discussing the merits of individuals' performances, individuals' poor technique, human frailties, or even individuals' hurt feelings. I certainly am not interested in any of them in the context of this thread. Why are you? Beyond the slightly worrying ease with which NATS employees jump to take offense, all those things are wholly insignificant to the matter under question which is primarily how you measure safety in a very safe system, and especially given that insiders rather sadly default to "it's very safe / leave us alone".
You really shouldn't take these discussions of the system you work with so personally, nor for that matter claim so much credit for the lack of incidents in what is so obviously a very safe system i.e. it is largely a characteristic of the system you inherited and the training given to you, and planning done by your predecessors that incidents are scarce. Sure, you are continually developing an even better system ... But with all said and done,
scarce doesn't automatically equal
safe - that's the proposition under debate.
'Andrew' wasn't
tarring you and your colleagues. He was pointing at no-one other than the system itself, which simply meant that some as yet unbounded flaw in the system seems to have permitted "errant" behaviour that risked compromising the safety of aircraft to slip through into "general acceptance" further than he as an expert observer thinks was good for your culture, or is good for us as the general public.
You may well as a group be skilled at catching dropping knives without drawing blood, but your business isn't a circus act, is it?
I have said before: Your business is our business.
And incidentally your management doesn't agree with you about the significance of your employment package including pension. They were worried sick at the thought of you working to rule when there was concern expressed by your airline customers about how on earth it made economic sense to keep your pension scheme afloat, when the rest of the working population has to bite the bullet with something far inferior thesedays. Your management thought they'd lose you, and the business would implode.
You are a highly strung group of people. As a group you are elitist. As a group you are particularly defensive against requests for information about the hows and whys.
Some of us want to know the extent of some of the feats you think you should daily undertake in our name, and what new systems you think you have working properly that support your ever more developed separation tactics.
I perfectly understand how close you guys get to risking your licences and livelihoods when other's eyes come off the ball and you have to pick up the pieces, but that might be a signal that things can't go on as they have been lately. Cue 'Andrew' and his decision to 'out' his report.
Perhaps things have already changed so much that a change in UKAIP is necessary to redraw the lines of legal accountability (liability) with regard to maintaining separation, for example? I don't think you are as accountable in law for the safe conduct of individual flights as US ATCOs, for example?
A change there might concentrate a few minds into real thought, instead of tripping off capital letter emphasis of all the old aviation cliches, ... oh and polishing the life out of that vastly over-subscribed 'p' club badge.
Please stop deflecting the debate with your implication that no safety debate is valid unless it is between insiders. Dare I say that is surely bordering on the arrogant, and at the very least might be misjudged in the open forum?