When an airport changes its ATC provider...

[Mooncrest]

...what happens to all the communications, radar, navigation equipment etc ?

In the UK, I'm thinking of the situations at Birmingham, Edinburgh and Gatwick airports, all one-time NATS units and now, others.
Assuming these airports owned all their ATC gear, and the new service provider was satisfied with it, great. However, if some or all of it was owned by the outgoing provider, what would stop them swiping everything back on the stroke of midnight and leaving their ex-client high and dry ? For various legal and practical reasons I could never envisage something like this happening. I expect there have to be protection and continuation clauses in contracts.

Thankyou.

[chevvron]

The CAA required all aerodrome authorities to provide their own equipment sometime in the '80s thus allowing ANSPs to be changed without withdrawl of facilities however some companies like NATS Engneering have contracts with the aerodrome to supply and maintain equipment even if there is a change of ANSP like the three you mention.
This didn't stop some ANSPs from 'doing the dirty' with some ATS contracts where (according to one case I heard of) after a change of provider they fired all ATS personnel at end of play on the friday then spent the weekend phoning round to offer new contracts (on reduced terms of course) to about half of the remainding staff to commence on the monday morning.

[Mooncrest]

Thankyou chevron. I wasn't aware of the CAA rule but it makes perfect sense to avoid the scenarios I was thinking of. I would have thought or hoped TUPE would have protected the staff but perhaps not.

[chevvron]

I don't know the full details but I believe it all stemmed from an 'occurence' at Cardiff where NATS operated both ATS and the navigation facilities.
NATS closed for the night and suddenly the aerodrome manager decided he wanted them to re-open but as all the tels staff and ATC had gone home, the manager kicked up a stink.

[Equivocal]

Originally Posted by chevvron

The CAA required all aerodrome authorities to provide their own equipment sometime in the '80s.....

Not strictly true, well, absolute rubbish actually. When ANS provision became a real open market, and airports, particularly the larger ones, realised they might be able to get a better deal than they did from their current contractors, contract renewals (or just invitations for expressions of interest) were opened to bids.

Most airports viewed changing providers as too great a business risk and just carried on with whoever they had. Then one airport decided to change provider. As I recall, they ended their contract with at big ANSP that they had used for years, which was a bit of an anomaly anyway being a small operation, and decided to run their own services. The night the old provider left, they took pretty much all the important equipment with them - next morning providing a service was a bit tricky. I have no idea what the contracts between the airport and the ANSP said, indeed I suspect that there were few documents that we would recognise as service provision contracts these days describing the terms, and I think the airport was rather surprised because they didn't expect the kit to disappear.

More taken by surprise was the CAA/SRG because this had not been considered when competition between service providers was brought into the regulatory framework, and when the airport phoned up to say 'what can we do?' there was no ready answer. Arguably, one might say that it was a business issue and of no concern for the safety regulator, but the CAA also had some responsibilities for assuring continuity of service so it became a CAA/SRG matter. The outcome, as I recall, was guidance to airports to ensure that equipment (and a number of other aspects) should be included in contract negotiations and that airports might like to consider being the 'owners' of equipment, especially as existing equipment reached end of life and were renewed.

There was a requirement introduced around the same time that operational procedures - and particularly the MATS Part 2 - must be transferred to the new provider. This was problematic because some ANSPs, those either with much experience in contract service provision or with sizeable legal departments, claimed that the procedures/MATS 2 were copyright and had IPR value. I'm not sure how that argument panned out - I think the CAA's legal department view was that the courts could decide if it became necessary.

I know one or two airports did buy some of their own ANS equipment, but I don't think it became a common practise. I imagine that better contracts and planning for changes could manage the problem without the airport incurring capital/leasing costs themselves if it wasn't necessary.

I am well out of the way things are done in the UK these days but it clearly is possible to change ANSP at a major airport successfully - it's been done at Gatwick and Birmingham, although there are differing views about the degree of success . At Birmingham, where the airport took over directly service provision, they probably made the wise choice of employing an ex-CAA inspector to be the unit manager - the manager was then more likely to be able to navigate all of the CAA requirements.

But back to the original point - I'm not aware of how things happen these days but I don't think you'll many airports that contract out ANS service provision own much of the ANS kit.

[Mooncrest]

ATC is in-house at a fair few medium sized British airports, e.g. East Midlands, Leeds Bradford and Newcastle. That's just the ones I know about. I don't expect they will have to worry about external ANSPs creating aggro for them any time soon!