Spitoon - As a controller I respect your opinion. If you say that there will be a measurable improvement in safety, I'll buy it. The reason I'll go along with you is that I trust the real professionals in the system. But I trust those who run airport's as far as I can spit. So if I was a shareholder in NIA I'd make sure that the 'consultants' who were engaged to force this scheme through were paid by independently measured achievements in safety. No improvement, no pay! And the same for the director's of the airport. But I'm going to guess that there's someone (or people) trousering a nice little earner/s here and they'll bugger off once they've got the cash (just before they get fired). The other NIA (EGNT) set the precedent when the knobs running it got a contractual kickback for arranging for the airport going into an addition £340M into debt. So Spitoon, your last paragraph sums up what I think precisely.
PM