Atcinstructor
21st Jan 2001, 19:55
20/01/01
To whom it may concern.
I would like to make it quite clear that these observations are not the remarks born of a past employee of Serco with an axe to grind. As part of the ongoing debate on the "merits" of the part privatisation of NATS I make the following remarks as a neutral bystander, watching with incredulity while the future of Air Traffic Control is seriously being bartered away to a company which in aviation terms must have the worst history of cost cutting in recent years.
Serco have absolutely no experience of running large, complex aviation contracts in the UK. Indeed their one attempt at running a medium size International Airport at Liverpool ended with their withdrawal from the contract. Did they fall or were they pushed? Whatever the answer to that question, there is no doubt that they ran down the staffing in the ATC section to a barely acceptable level.
Bailbrook College until recently was the jewel in the crown of the Serco business empire as the one privately owned Air Traffic Control training college in the UK, bought from International Air Radio in the Nineties, and a thriving business at that time. Indeed Mr Gummer the then Minister of Transport opened a new Simulator Block in 1994, and the morale of the staff was at an all time high. Now the buildings are up for sale, the college is moving to a new location in Chippenham [believed to be an old redundant factory], staff morale has never been so low, and the college, a listed Georgian building, with its halls of residence, restaurant, and all the other student amenities are on the property market.
In recent years Serco slowly made a large proportion of their permanent and pensionable staff redundant; indeed from personal experience, as I and four other permanent staff were being ushered out of the back door at Bailbrook in March 1999, part time consultancy staff from Australia, (who in turn had been made redundant in their own country on very generous terms), were being brought in the front door to replace us.
Is this the way you want the future of British ATC to be run?
Serco are not investors in people, they are investors in themselves.
In the few years that they have had experience in running UK aviation contracts, Serco have
1. Lost the contract to run the only International Airport in the UK that they had.
2. Closed a formerly successful ATC college in Bath.
3. Made long serving staff redundant at Bath while taking on overseas (cheaper) labour at the same time.
4. Cut the staffing in most of the ATC units that they have taken over (Bristol Filton is a prime example)
5. Lost their core customers in aviation training, for example, Norway. {To the USA)
6. Tried to open a "College of Excellence" in Kuala Lumpur training Air Traffic Controllers. It lasted two years.
7. The other overseas contracts they are running at the moment were mostly if not all set up by IAL. the company they took over in the early Nineties. So it would seem that their success rate of setting up entirely new contracts from scratch is at the best suspect.
To sum up, I would have to say that listening to ministers in the Houses of Parliament underlining the fact that safety in Air Traffic Control is not going to be compromised, while at the same time considering Serco as a prime contender to run the service, would be amusing in the extreme, if it were not so horrifying. The thought of this company getting their hands on ATC is most air traffic controllers' worst nightmare scenario.
.
To whom it may concern.
I would like to make it quite clear that these observations are not the remarks born of a past employee of Serco with an axe to grind. As part of the ongoing debate on the "merits" of the part privatisation of NATS I make the following remarks as a neutral bystander, watching with incredulity while the future of Air Traffic Control is seriously being bartered away to a company which in aviation terms must have the worst history of cost cutting in recent years.
Serco have absolutely no experience of running large, complex aviation contracts in the UK. Indeed their one attempt at running a medium size International Airport at Liverpool ended with their withdrawal from the contract. Did they fall or were they pushed? Whatever the answer to that question, there is no doubt that they ran down the staffing in the ATC section to a barely acceptable level.
Bailbrook College until recently was the jewel in the crown of the Serco business empire as the one privately owned Air Traffic Control training college in the UK, bought from International Air Radio in the Nineties, and a thriving business at that time. Indeed Mr Gummer the then Minister of Transport opened a new Simulator Block in 1994, and the morale of the staff was at an all time high. Now the buildings are up for sale, the college is moving to a new location in Chippenham [believed to be an old redundant factory], staff morale has never been so low, and the college, a listed Georgian building, with its halls of residence, restaurant, and all the other student amenities are on the property market.
In recent years Serco slowly made a large proportion of their permanent and pensionable staff redundant; indeed from personal experience, as I and four other permanent staff were being ushered out of the back door at Bailbrook in March 1999, part time consultancy staff from Australia, (who in turn had been made redundant in their own country on very generous terms), were being brought in the front door to replace us.
Is this the way you want the future of British ATC to be run?
Serco are not investors in people, they are investors in themselves.
In the few years that they have had experience in running UK aviation contracts, Serco have
1. Lost the contract to run the only International Airport in the UK that they had.
2. Closed a formerly successful ATC college in Bath.
3. Made long serving staff redundant at Bath while taking on overseas (cheaper) labour at the same time.
4. Cut the staffing in most of the ATC units that they have taken over (Bristol Filton is a prime example)
5. Lost their core customers in aviation training, for example, Norway. {To the USA)
6. Tried to open a "College of Excellence" in Kuala Lumpur training Air Traffic Controllers. It lasted two years.
7. The other overseas contracts they are running at the moment were mostly if not all set up by IAL. the company they took over in the early Nineties. So it would seem that their success rate of setting up entirely new contracts from scratch is at the best suspect.
To sum up, I would have to say that listening to ministers in the Houses of Parliament underlining the fact that safety in Air Traffic Control is not going to be compromised, while at the same time considering Serco as a prime contender to run the service, would be amusing in the extreme, if it were not so horrifying. The thought of this company getting their hands on ATC is most air traffic controllers' worst nightmare scenario.
.