It is most relevant to discuss the previous C (OP) who was extremely controversial and clearly punching well above his weight as a chief. He did not exactly improve his battered image by making his now legendary comment that ‘rocket science is not rocket science’. Priceless!
But one must look beyond that single person. More than a decade of catastrophic mismanagement can no longer be swept under the carpet. Haphazard planning, lack of procedures, lack of quality control, lack of standardization, and lack of training - in short: lack of any kind of decent management has resulted in a scenario where far too many controllers can only work one sector. This is management’s shortsighted way of providing bums in seats. There seems to be no real plan about cross training. Liken this to having 4 pilots in the cockpit. One can taxi, one can take off, one can fly and the last one can land the plane. If you will excuse the pun, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that things easily go awry under such circumstances.
But it is the same old story: as long as nothing goes wrong expect no action to be taken. The bureaucrats who call themselves ATC managers issue endless amounts of memos and reminders full of gobbledygook and balderdash stating the obvious in an attempt to remain clean in case things go wrong. Their biggest fear in life is getting blamed for something and losing their pension.
Long gone are the days when management looked after controllers and in return got their respect. Now it is more a case of ‘us’ against ‘them’. It is hard to see any real improvement before the majority of the management has been replaced by younger and more capable individuals. Hopefully, this will happen soon. Meanwhile, the beatings shall continue.
Last edited by RRSM; 3rd Oct 2010 at 16:05.