And an alleged 13% pay rise for our glorious leader let's not forget.
You won't ever find me defending executive pay. I'm firmly in the camp that can't see how one individual can be worth so much whether they work for NATS or a bank or anywhere else. I'm also not convinced that the mutual arrangement whereby a group of executives from other companies get to set the rate in ours and vice versa actually sets a fair market rate for executive pay. I would however point out that it wasn't actually a pay rise. If you set somebody's pay set on performance and one year they don't hit that target and the next year they do the subsequent increase in pay isn't really a pay rise.
And an alleged £50 million dividend this year to the airlines
I have a slightly different view on that. The shareholders including me haven't had a fair rate of return in the good years. If a slightly higher dividend is paid this year it will redress that a bit especially as it's unlikely that one will be paid for the next couple of years.
BTW, the 10% reduction you are quoting, is that flights or revenue?
The higher revenue flights are not down by nearly as much as the less lucrative traffic.
The downturn is based on CSUs rather than traffic. It's a much better indicator of actual income in NERL than traffic as it takes into account the difference between lucrative and less lucrative traffic. You can find the figures on the Eurocontrol Charging site which Pelton Level posts links to from time to time.