The perfect storm analogy comes into play here for me ; prior to this “event”, NSL were pushing ( at an alarming rate, PR et al ) the Virtual Tower project. As I understand it, Projects - as a business commodity - have been shelved indefinitely. However, as all the talk currently is about Non Ops reductions, the VT thing was all about centralisation of ATC ( Swanwick or Prestwick or Eastern Asia ? ) and a limit on Ops staff, as all Towers as we know them wouldn’t be staffed ?

Depends on what you mean by ‘worked well’.

Some units are back near their pre COVID traffic levels, but still on limited staffing numbers, especially ATSAs. With no admin/non ops support staff attending, the operational staff are doing all those extra tasks in their breaks.

reading prestwick are saying cuts will be non operational staff, several hundred jobs across the NATS sites, question- does this mean us ATSA’s are safe?

You have answered your own question. If you are a non-operational ATSA then VR is a possibility.

Where is that? Across the Eurocontrol network, July was 60% down on same period last year. Beginning of August -50% so far.

Look here: https://www.eurocontrol.int/Economic...on-States.html

Select Uk in the top left and you'll see on the bottom right a list of movements for the UK yesterday. Stansted second busiest with Luton third. Gatwick only 4th. But this will obviously change.

With the current demise of Gatwick movements, NATS must be quietly glad they no longer have the contract and related finance issues! Surprised Gatwick is even above Manchester.

One can narrow it down. If I was rich and could afford to own/rent a business jet, and could therefore afford to either pay the fine for not quarantining, or could afford to take the time to quarantine in one of my houses, where would it make sense to fly to/from, where everyone is discreet and it’s very private, away from any commercial pax?

The big picture is telling a story, but that’s made up of many smaller stories that can be extreme and contradictory.