ATC assistants
Hi Loz,
Regarding your question about ATC assistants: I spoke to the assistants at Southampton about this when I was visiting their tower.
Basically there isn't an enourmous demand for this role, apparently NATS generally fill their requirement for assistants by recruiting people who have failed at college as TATCOs (I guess they figure they've already invested in you quite a bit, and you've already had a lot of very helpful training). Occasionally NATS might advertise for assistants, but I don't think they've done so in a very long time.
Non NATS airfields will generally advertise publicly for assistants (check flight magazine etc.) but these roles don't come around a lot. Sometimes this can be a good back door route into ATC - become an assistant at a non NATS airfield, and then later on if they need new ATCOs and if you are lucky then they might sponsor you through one of the non NATS courses (i.e. probably at Cwmbran).
Last edited by Pat42; 25th Jan 2010 at 14:10.