Originally Posted by
Fuji Abound
I am particularly unhappy that NATS are able to charge so much for a radar feed. I was reliably told that the current cost of a feed is in excess of £100K pa with other intiial set up costs. This means that facilities that would be willing, able and qualified to provide a service either dont or must fund the cost of their own head rather than use those funds to provide the service.
You can see why a private company (styled as operating in a competitive marketplace) would object to having to provide its key competitive advantage (having the nation wide radar infrastructure) to competitors at marginal cost (which would be pretty close to zero).
IMHO this was a major bo!!ock the UK government dropped when establishing the licence conditions and terms of reference for privatising ATC. We are now stuck in a particularly inefficient and arguably less safe system where less radar service is available and more heads, not integrated, and with maintenance issues are operated than necessary.