1. From what I have read from this thread, management seems to be really poor, but can someone explain why that is??
CEO = No ATC experience, bonus driven, management layers below him tell him what he wants to hear, certain areas of the business are in a shambles and are being held together by work-face controllers, techs and support staff.
ATC's are results driven, you get real time feedback of how you are performing. You are constantly monitored as to your performance. If you f@ck up you pay a penalty. If you continue to f@ck up you can lose your licence, it can and does happen. ATC's get their nose out of joint when managers f@ck up and they don't take responsibility for their f@ck ups.
ATC's get their nose out of joint when managers lie about ATC's during EBA negotiations, ASA staff numbers have exploded in the back office but continue to decline ATC wise despite a significant growth in movements.
2. If management is as bad as everyone here is saying, what upsides are there to the job if your willing to put up with poor management? So what im asking is why do you like/love your job??
Once you are rated and feeling comfortable you don't take any work home with you. There is a real sense of accomplishment when you are doing your job well. When we had the appropriate staffing levels there was scope to get involved in projects etc.
3. I have a PPL, does that make the start of the course any easier study wise? or does it not really make any difference??
Yes, very much so, any spare brain capacity that you can allocate to the more difficult learning tasks of the course will help you.
4. There is a lot of posts saying tower is really good, but I want to know what enroute is like?? Any guys/gals here do it and really like it?? I thought it sounded really interesting.
I've done en-route most of the time with a stint in a tower. Tower I couldn't stand and couldn't wait to get out of there (maybe it had to do with the aerodrome atmosphere, the facilities in the tower falling apart or being cooped up in a small work area with the same people day after day?) En-route is extremely varied, you can be doing full radar sectors, full procedural sectors, a mixture of both. There may be sectors that have a heavy workload during the night shift, sectors that are busiest along the times that business people want to travel etc
5. A few people here are saying to get down and check out a tower/center, but I called up airsevices the other day to try and get a visit to melb center/tower to talk to some controllers, but I was told they don't do that. The best they could offer me was a spot in the GA information night next month because I'm a pilot. Anyone here had any luck getting to visit melb tower/center??
Do the GA info night, it's better than nothing. Unfortunately those nights show you around when there's not much going on, you don't get much of a sense of the job.