It does not help when the most senior managers say to the Commons Select committee that we will have solved our staffing problem by next year - we anticipate only being 12 controllers short. Of course what he didn't say was that all those ATCOs posted in have be trained and to obtain validations on the sectors.
Looks like we will continue to close airspace for years. North Sea was closed agian last night overnight with the Ocean traffic mainly from the north. Lots of long re-routes. Not long before some airline takes a Ryanair approach and tries to sue NATS for this type of action.