NATS will be skating on thin ice if they get rid of any ATCOs. It will be short term gain for long term pain in my opinion. We're still bringing in AAVA's at ScOACC, we're in the winter season of staff sickness, the economy
will recover in time and the airlines will too, albeit leaner and better prepared for the future. If you cut staff numbers now, there will be no opportunity to release controllers from rostered positions to cross train so they will go into the summer and beyond still holding only one or two validations. Without a bit of slack in staff numbers you're not going to get people trained so that they can replace ATCOs at normal retirement date and over the next few years here at Scottish there are going to be quite a few of those who hold multiple validations.
