Originally Posted by
Door Slider
Distraction is a human factor, it can and does happen at any airfield regardless of it being a military or civilian, big or small.
Is the question regarding the ATC school at Shawbury stem from the fact it's a RW base?
As far as I'm aware nowadays, students from the Air Traffic Control School at Shawbury no longer train on 'live' traffic in the tower at Shawbury, using simulators which can simulate literally any type of aircraft so implying they are only used to helicopter traffic is totally misleading. They are all trained to the highest standards (as are civil controllers trained by NATS at Whitely) and if at the end of the course they have not met the required standard, they do not graduate and are often re-coursed.
The 'incident' appears to have been caused by the oncoming controller being distracted while an aircraft was being vectored for the easterly approach at Northolt which includes a 'dogleg' turning final at about (I think) 4nm (please correct me if I'm wrong); the aircraft cannot be positioned on long final for Northolt due to traffic on the 09L ILS at Heathrow so it requires a great amount of concentration to achieve the ideal final approach track.
Northolt have separate frequencies allocated for 'approach' and 'final' directors so I'm surprised as it appeared to be so busy that the supervisor wasn't keeping a better eye on things.