Jungle Drums
The jungle drums are certainly beating. I heard that the new training facility will be in Bournemouth and will open before the end of 2010.
The NATS college is moving away and its still unclear what the long term NATS training solutions will be. There are also still significant cost obstacles to overcome at NATS. The new CEO will have his focus on cutting out overheads. The recent traffic downturn has given some breathing space, re NATS training commitments, but decisions will need to be taken soon.
Elsewhere, ATS providers are all struggling with cost management. The new financial transparency, that comes by law with Single European Sky, is causing many European ATC providers to wring their hands and look at outsourcing training as a lower cost option (no big corporate overheads).
The trends to downsizing cost are already there to see, Eurocontrol college at Luxembourg closed, Entry Point North losing Norwegain Training to a college in North Dakota. (and Norway was a partner in EPN!)
I think we'll see more commercial aviation training colleges in the next five years , focussing in ATC and related topics (Av English, Environment etc.) in the UK at least Bournemouth is the obvious choice. I think the story has legs.
I'm off to polish my cv!
Katie