Sorry, Quokka, I beg to differ. Your post may be tongue-in-cheek, but you address a point made by "wellconcerned"- a point I was going to ignore in order to starve the troll.
However, the ATC skill set
is special, despite management's desires (generic ratings
). You will have seen/met any number of spacial reasoners who couldn't do the job, any number of very intelligent individuals train who dont get a license? Maybe it's their inability to make decisions under pressure, to deal with stress, to deal with shift work, to deal with boredom, or to cope with the constant amount of bull$hit raining down on them from above. Whatever- the skill set required is a blend of intelligence/mindset/temperament etc. and is found in only a subset of 'spacial reasoners'.
Certainly, whilst most of the pressure in the job results from trying to be commercially expeditious, errors
are life-threatening, whatever the likes of the "wellconcerned"s say.