It is a challenge, but i'm hoping for the support of validated atco's, as are my colleagues, not the impression that we're too old to do the job.
And you will have my support if you end up at my unit or whatever unit you go to. However i do think that there needs to be an age limit on new recruits.
It comes down to the basic cost of an ATCO. I heard it costs somewhere in the region of £250K to train one from starting at the college to validation. If they are recruited at 50 after taking 3 years to get vaild then you might get 5/6 years before they retire, so that costs the company £50K ish a year of useful work plus wages, hardly the most attractive course of action for a company that bleats on about how poor it is.
I'm not a NATS lackey and don't agree with the way they are going on about being short of money and the economic downturn etc etc, but we have to act like a business. I can't think of another company that pays you to be a drain on resources for 3 years before you start contributing, it makes sense that you can potentially work for them for the longest possible amount of time.