NATS Farnborough and Swanwick TC - Adjacent sectors but different buildings
 

Hello there,

A while ago NATS moved staff from Manchester to Prestwick to fulfill their master plan of "4 buildings into 2".

David Harrison said: "What [the move] is going to allow us to do is give us a bigger and better environment and new technology and platforms to operate from."

One thing I don't understand: Farnborough LARS operates in coverage areas adjacent to several TC sectors in London, yet the building which houses these ATCers are kept separate to Swanwick.

Could I ask what was the reasons for having two separate buildings, instead of having all the guys sit next to each other, maybe for purposes of co-ordination?

Cheaper.
nats Farnborough is a much lower pay band.

Don't even think about Northolt!!

Oh, you mean that military unit within the London CTR which is permitted to reduce Class A separation standards to those which would cause a civil London CTR ATCO to lose his licence?

Something like that.....

Its not like Farnborough LARS is a "centre" itself, seperate from any airport or area centre. The LARS's are delivered from the radar room at Farnborough Airport alongside the approach radar controller for Farnborough (infact a lot of the time its bandboxed). The ATCOs providing the LARS's are also qualified to control in the tower at Farnborough. The room they control from would be there anyway so no problem really!

Like someone said before, instead of NATS paying band 5 ATCOs to provide the LARS from Swanwick, NATS can pay band 1 ATCOs (who also double up as tower controllers) to provide the services. Its kind of two for the price of LESS than one if you see what I mean.

On an ATCO staff course I did in '86, Swanwick was still in the planning stages and we were told it would include 10 'FIR Radar' positions to replace LARS units; wonder what happened to those? Probably cheaper to get assistants wiith FISO (Area) licences to do the FIR I suppose.

That's because we would not be able to operate otherwise :ok:


Funny you say that HD, when the planning stages were going on Northolt were put forward as an option for providing part of the service. However the money that was being offered, coupled with the issues Brize Radar were experiencing knocked that one on the head. :hmm:


MM

Providing only part of the service would have ruled Northolt out. For the service to be effective all 3 sectors needed to be housed under one roof with the controllers interchangeable and hence the sectors (North/East) bandboxable.
A new NATS service, Western Radar, this time middle airspace, was recently started by NATS. I've heard no reports of it but I believe this one is being done from CTC Whitely rather than Swanwick.

So much for the 'two-centre strategy' then.