Looking for atc training in West Midlands uk
 

I currently living in west midland uk. However a trip to nats to complete a course would mean either 3 hrs traveling every day or living down there. Either are not really suitable as I don't currently have time to travel or money to live down there. So my question is, is there a local place that does air traffic training for when I leave education. :confused:

no. sorry.

If you're offered a place with NATS they will pay you minimum wage whilst at the college plus a small accommodation allowance. You won't be rich but it's enough to live on.

Would Cwmbran, Monmouth be any closer?

There is a facility at Gloucester Staverton.

If you can't commit to moving, I'd find a different career.

Living away from home is going to be the least of your hardships.

Nats pay you £11k pa plus £60 a week tax free living allowance. Rent a room, sell your car, bike everywhere and live frugally. If you want it you'll do it (but I think that question has already been answered)

If you can't afford to stay near Whiteley and let NATS pay you to be trained I doubt you will be able to afford the many many thousands for a privately funded course which is the only other option. Except the RAF.

@notlongnow,

There is always the Royal Navy, a much better uniform.

Fair enough. Is there still an Army Air Corp, and do they have controllers?

There is but they dont have controllers. The uniform cannot be that good as I am coming over to the dark side of NATS.

I for one won't jump down this young person's throat. Good on you for finding out about a potential career before you have left school. I know all too many final year Uni students who aren't even considering a career, and they graduate in a matter of days!

The way I see it you have the NATS option, which I feel has been described here fairly well.

The Self-funded option - depending on how many ratings you want, even if its Tower Only you're after to begin with, you're looking at well over £10,000.

The Military - They will very much move you away from home, and yes the Royal Navy is by far the best uniform going in Air Traffic, and pay you pretty well for the privilege too. But, for now at least, your ratings will not be valid outside of the military. So when you retire from your stint inside, you will be looking to pay for your courses anyway.

Other options I feel might be worth mentioning are:

Eurocontrol. Not currently recruiting for controllers, but by the time you leave school they might be. (I think the wait is at least a couple of years at this time).

And finally;
It might well be worth getting a job as an Air Traffic Control Assistant and looking for onward training through you airport, once you are there. It is by no means certain as an entry route, but if you can make it happen (and people do), then you'd have the benefit of a job to go to after getting the rating, which gives you a place to validate, a steady income and you may well not have to pay a penny for you training either. The downside is, you might wait a whole career to see this come to fruition.

Hope it was useful,

Phil

Not necessarily true. The RAF can send off their blue books to the CAA and you can get some civilian ratings awarded. It's been done loads, just isn't publicised as the RAF don't pay their controllers fairly.

I'll be sure to mention that to the ex-RAF controller on my course at the college!

But what are those civilian ratings on? A Civvy Licence?

I worked with several ex-RAF controllers, all who had had to go through the full civvy training so is this a new procedure?

Its so easy to patronise and jump down the throat of an enthusiast just looking for some friendly advise. In short, no is the answer, as previously mentioned, your choices are GlobalATS (Gloucester airport), Cwmbran (I think still ran by BAE Systems) or NATS. The latter will pay you whilst you train, the first two you will have to privately fund at around 15-20K for a TWR validation.

My advise is you go and visit some local units, send a friendly email, make a phone call and I,m sure they will welcome you with open arms, make sure its definitely the sort of career you want to spend your life doing. Best of luck,

As a current Navy controller but soon to be civilian controller I am pretty sure that my military llicence becomes useless the second I leave the military. I know alot of people that have made the transition and have never heard of anyone getting their blue book swapped for a yellow one.

Yeah I'm pretty sure whoever told you the CAA will award you civil ratings from a blue book is pulling your leg.

CAA will give military aerodrome rated, recently validated ATCOs a FISO Licence as a consolation prize.

Aha... a whole world of difference.

As far as I know if we go do our training at Cwmbran then we get cedit for the Met which takes 1 week off the course. If we train with NATS then we do the full course.

Back to the original question, you would be crazy to pay thousands of pounds to train if you can get paid for it. Either accept that you are going to have to be mobile if you want to be a controller or think about another career. Either way good luck.

Interesting that NATS are still recruiting when they are looking for around 400 redundancies in the En Route operation (not all need to be ATCOs to be fair) and they may have to find jobs for Birmingham ATCOs who don't want to transfer to the new mob.

I think it makes sense. Get rid of someone at the top of the scale on the expensive pension and replace with someone cheaper on the cheap pension. I'm just wondering how long it will be until they create a new pay scale for new starters like they did with the pension...

We already have 2 sets of staff on different terms and conditions, 2 pension schemes remember!!!!

HR don't really have a clue what makes a good controller - this is just a numbers game... sorry, thread drift