OK,
Here's a novel approach for NATS before it sinks millions into another project (considering we've already signed up to iTec - a £250million project which in the blurb states that for it to work is reliant on all of NATS being EFD compliant... even though at the moment there are major stumbling blocks with TC EFD)... why not approach the airlines and say to them:
" Hello dear customer(s), we at NATS are trying to save a little bit of money here and there, and one of the ideas we have come up with involves a nightime extension of the airspace that is covered procedurally.
What this means is that we will not be as efficient with our airspace. We are doing this because at the times we are talking about, there is less traffic density.
The fact that you spiffing chaps tend to fly the same routes as each other at the same time (i.e. although traffic is reduced, it tends to be doing the same thing) is a trifling matter that we can look at some other time, or more likely, conveniently overlook.
We hope to save NATS somewhere in the region of £xxx per year. Of course the downside with inefficient use of airspace (something you, our lovely customers are always badgering NATS about) is that you fine chaps will have to fly further and for longer. The cost to you chaps will most likely be more than the saving to NATS.
Hows about it then, fine customers???"
Why not do some number crunching then approach them? Hell if their fuel bills etc are more than NATS would save on a handful of controllers, they'd probably pay the wages out of their own pockets...
The night-time window that the skies over the UK are quiet enough for procedural control not to have a big impact is so small that this must surely be a non starter.
The fact that the window will fall well within nighttime manning hours, as laid down by SRG, means that we will still have to employ ATCOs on bona fide nightshift either side of the window, with all the ramifications of SRATCOH that incurs.
Just where is the benefit to NATS and the customers?
Procedural control is a wonderful thing, but it is used where radar is unavailable or not viable, not as a replacement because it is a better system
NATS once had pride in being one of the foremost ANSPs. Reducing the efficiency of our service is yet another backward step that is only seen as good by number crunchers, their sycophantic yes men, and people who have either never controlled, or haven't controlled for years.
As for hare-brained schemes, surely we would be cheaper employing 50 chimps with typewriters - they might not come up with a Shakespeare play, but they stand a good chance of coming up with a more realistic way ahead for NATS.
Hell, we only need to source 40, the other 10 can come from the chimps who currently write the OPNOTs that appear on EBS every day.