Military ATCOs
PILOTS - be careful what you wish for!!
There was a midair collision over western France c1973 when the military were called in when civil ATC were on strike!
Having been a Hercules nav and civil controller, both London Area and LHR ,it has never ceased to amaze me how little my pilot chums knew or understood about ATC.I also worked at Boscombe Down and the arrogance of many of the single-seat brigade had to be heard to be believed, and I say this as a father of a current airline pilot who is also ex-single seat and test pilot.( He is a bloody good bloke of whom I am immensely proud - my hero in fact -but my ATCO son and I keep him in touch with reality!).
To say sack them all is stupid! If BA sacked all its pilots, within weeks it could replace them with already trained correctly type-rated people.If NATS sacked all its ATCOs it would take years to replace them; who would train them? Each ATCO is only licensed to work at the unit at which he is based - there is not an equivalent to, say a B747-400 type rating.