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Old 3rd Aug 2013, 17:51
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Daermon ATC
 
Join Date: Aug 2010
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First of all let me join Sonnendec thanking for you tempered response.

To the OP, as you can see spanish atcos face huge amounts of pressure which have nothing to do with the traffic load (although that one is also way over the top with Aena ignoring sector capacity figures).

Besides that, there are other factors which might contribute to your negative experience of our work. You might not be aware that Aena has not trained new controllers since the last batch from 2006. This obviously means serious understaffing (even Eurocontrol agrees to that... you might want to check the reason codes for delays within spanish airspace... see how much belongs to "ATC Staffing" or "ATC Capacity"... and no, no "ATC industrial action") and Aena has only managed to barely hold on to it by relocating staff from privatized towers.

I am lucky not to work in any of them but if half of what I've heard from thos who did is true they are a huge safety risk waiting to explode from "risk" to "fact".

Might I enquire on what route you were flying? Several ACCs have currently several trainees (from the privatized towers) on frequency. They have been rushed through their local endorsement with blatant disregard for safety just in order to have them available (at least on the paper) for the peak summer times. Don't expect a freshly minted route atco to be able to accomodate all requests for direct routings while barely being able to keep up with the traffic load.

I will be flamed for this but nevertheless: You may know that about a week ago we had a terrible train crash in Santiago with 79 victims? The morning after all headlines blamed it on the driver and our Dear Ministry (read as in: North Korean's Dear Leader) of public works was praising the safety of our railsystem and that the train was making 190 km/h when at that specific curve it had to make 80 km/h maximum.
Now I am aware that the driver does also have partial responsibility for what happened but in this morning's paper was the amusing fact that our railway system is going to be upgraded with a newer safety mechanism (already widely in use here but not on that specific curve) which will reduce the speed on that curve to 30 km/h maximum (I thought 80 was safe?) automatically.
And the question is, couldn't we have done all that before killing nearly 80 people? Read carefully and apply insight to spanish air traffic control.

Fly safe.
Daermon ATC is offline