NATS Training Section
 

Has anyone out there noticed just how top heavy NATS training section has become with middle management of all kinds?

The amalgamation of all three training centres in the South should have provided opportunities for some thinning out of management grades but that doesn't seem to have happened. In fact cronyism and self interest prevail and jobs are simply created out of nowhere!!

They've got a manager for everything but the service to their customers is no better for it. I feel sorry for the guys and girls on the 'shopfloor' who get to enact all of their management's daft plans to stay in a job!

It's rumoured that they can't even attract ATCO instructors to the simulators any longer because they're all so fed up with being messed around.

It seems to me that if NATS are serious about cutting costs then management could take a long hard look at themselves before meddling with everyone else.

Plenty of ATCO sim instructors available via Capita... ;)

Ah, Capita, - yes.......
They have just written to me informing me that my property is now "under investigation" for not possessing a valid TV Licence. :E

do you still need those things in the UK? If yes, what percentage actually bother with it?
In Oz they abandoned them about 40 years ago, as there was such a high percentage did not pay it.
Sorry about being off topic, but looking to move to UK for 2 years in about 3 years and interested to know.

Very much so; our streets are patrolled by detector vans which can triangulate where a TV is being watched then cross check whether they have a valid licence.
Revenue is passed on to the BBC who waste it on paying unnecessary managers, programming and overpaid TV 'celebrities'(well they think they're celebrities anyway).

Chevvron....really?...I reckon your tinfoil hat needs a top up of peanut butter:= :p

Ah Morrisons 'Value' peanut butter, nice and chunky, only 37p a jar.

Thats no way to talk about Jonathan Woss, worth every million

Doesn't work for the BBC any more (doesn't work period in my opinion) but I bet the BBC are paying him compensation for terminating his contract; that's another way they waste money.

chevvron, I wonder, does the Capita operative doing the triangulation wear a 'cocked hat'? :ok:

From ATC training to Jonathan Woss in 7 moves, not bad. :D

If the OP's post is true then I'd suggest those down south take a look at the training section at PC.

Thanks to my involvement with EFD I've spent a lot of time in there of late and it's extremely lean, well managed, customer focussed and wins plaudits across the company consistently for what it delivers.

Of course, because it's up north, it also seems to be treated as a poor relation to the aforementioned resource-heavy behemoth that is the southern campus. Fancy that.

Do you mean Wick....or EGPX?

<<customer focussed >>

Sorry me old... but that sounds awfully like management yukspeak!

He's probably been on a course.

In 1973 at a GATCO organised Pilot-ATCO forum, much to the horror of a senior CAA Manager present, I heard a Prestwick ATCO tell everyone that the further north you came, the older & poorer were the ATC facilities & equipment. This was at a time when Gailes had 1950's radars & Airways was still in the ancient Redbrae House.

Has anything changed in nearly 40 years ? :confused:

Does Wick even have a training section? :E

I'm not really one for courses Loki. Unless we're talking golf, of course.

Eric T - it would appear not. That's progress for you.

Tigersaw; I wasn't specifically referring to Jonathon Woss; look at Alan Hansen, £1.5M pa for a couple of hours a week during the footy season only; if that's not wasting money what is?

Anything to do with foot ball is expensive. I resent every penny of my licence fee that goes towards paying megabucks to watch a bag of wind going from one end of a field to another.

HD

May be it is yukspeak...but it's true. You only have to look at what they have done to the ATSA EFD training package to see what "customer focus" looks like.

Keep up the good work guys.

OK. I'm afraid I never considered aeroplanes to be "customers". I just provided the best service I could whatever language the "suits" used!

I don't recall when you retired HD,but NATS has changed beyond all recognition over the past 10 or so years. It is not the organisation that I joined back in 1978.

So I'm told EW.. Great shame. I retired 9 years ago.

we still do.

A lot of organisations have changed since 1978. Not just Nats.
Perhaps the business model from 1978 was never going to be sustainable. It had to change at some point and it certainly has!
Not that I am a big fan of Nats in 2012, but do you guys really think it's much better elsewhere?

Why not ask those who have gone to Canada and Abu Dhabi?
Some great people, who, sadly, don't seem in a great hurry to return.
- A shame.

Don't misunderstand me I know that the model we had had to change. The difference is startling and particularly if.like HD.you have retired it can be difficult to take in the scale of change.

Not everything is a change for the worse....but there is an awful lot of BS as well.

<<the business model>>

More management yukspeak.

I've actually lost track of who I work for nowadays.
It was the CAA, Then NATS, Then NATS but a different NATS, Then NSL, Now NATS again, but one of a selection box of different NATS.

And further back... Min of Av, Board of Trade, Dept of This, That and the other.....

I used to work for natCs, the C stood for control and if you ask me things were never the same when the image consultants, or whoever it was dropped the C.

NAT C's???

Yup, NATCS...
Heady days...

Fila
 

Don't know where you heard that the College was short of instructors...pay has gone up massively in the last two years.....now a cool £100k p.a. job.

And they'll soon need every penny to purchase water from folk oop north. :E

That should ensure that they're good instructors too!

What you mean paying such a ridiculous salary will guarantee they don't get deadbeats who only instruct because they're useless at controlling?

Nah,
it's just that, traditionally, you have to pay 'big bucks' to attract ATCOs to work in a semi-arid environment. :}

Good job the head of training has some experience in the piping of water. :E

The "Southern Campus" should sail through this crisis with Flying Colours*. :ok:

*Wonder what happened to them?

Ahhhh, sorry, with you now. At first, when you said semi-arid, I was thinking you meant culturally!

If, hypothetically, one was already a qualified Instructor and wanted to be a full time instructor with NATS, who, hypothetically, might one contact?
Is it all done via Capita or are there ways to circumnavigate that route (hypothetically of course).:cool:

Crikey! I'm almost there!:p