@blissbak
How does this shame work? I mean, is there any kind of coordination or what between the ATC unit and those "plataforma" guys, how do they "handle" the traffic without screwing arrival/departure sequences, expecially in case of CTOT, bad weather and such as.
Quick answer:
"Who cares?"
On July 29th, 2010, AENA and the Spanish Goverment replaced ATC service at La Gomera Airport (GCGM) with AFIS service; on September 23rd, 2010, the same happened at El Hierro Airport (GCHI). This was the beginning of a great master plan aimed to replace ATC service with AFIS service at several Spanish airports, next to follow were Burgos, Logroño, Huesca ...
INECO (I mentioned this company before) was awarded the contract to provide the AFIS service with no public tendering process. Later it was known that INECO started secretly training their personnel in December 2009 at SENASA , the school at Madrid where until then all Spanish ATCO´s where trained for 20 months at least. The AFIS guys received a 7 week course, and nobody knows how they were selected for the job ...
Nobody cared about this, except for the Spanish ATCO´s ...
After only 1 month, AFIS service was replaced again by ATC service at El Hierro, but not the former ATCO´s: they simply added a few more days of training to the AFISO´s and VOILÁ! they became ATCO´s ...
The reason for this withdrawal mostly because of the complaints made by the local people and their public institutions, although some say that it was because of the rise in safety incidents involving the AFIS ...
Spreading of AFIS service in other airports was suspended, and it is yet unknown the amount of €€ waisted in this project ...
...and who cares ...?
SDP is another occurrence of this mismanagement, and until now, a lucky one: last winter was quite mild at LEMD, with almost no foggy days, snow or heavy rain. So lets hope future winters come as mild as the last one.
Anyway, who cares ...?
Sorry I can not give any more info regarding how SDP ant ATC coordinate at Barajas, I´ll try to ask about it.
Hasta luego!