Same mine was in March they told me possibly September

Nats have a voluntary redundancy process open at the moment. Although that's not affecting operational jobs at this stage, I'd be surprised if ab initio recruitment is going ahead at the same time.

And with that there is a pause on external vacancies. The training college and its trainees are also under review.

yes but what are they reviewing? It’ll be the number of trainees they will need from the college over the next few years

I took it as meaning current college trainees (and those due to start - e.g. me) are at risk. I hope I'm wrong on that one, but I can't say I'm confident...

Trainess that have just finished at Global ATS have been posted and joining units. I know that one of those is joining a unit in November.

Have they had good postings?

I only know that 1 has been posted to Farnborough. Aside from that I dont know.

What do you define as "a good posting"?

Only 4 have been given postings, the other 9 of us are in airport holding for potentially up to a year :(

As in, the unit the said trainees wanted to be posted at

Where did the 4 get posted?

My course, no one got the posting they wanted. People from the south coast ended up in Scotland, people from the midlands ended up in Scotland and the south coast.

Speculation that training will not return to the NATS college for a while, and the hundreds of TATCs will not be needed for 5+ years. Having said that there is an ageing workforce so I am sure things will open up again in 3 or 4 years.

As someone waiting to start a training course, this would hardly be unexpected but is still disheartening. Is this speculation based on anything that has come from NATS themselves or more based on expectations of the industry? I doubt my cohort will get any kind of official update until the furlough scheme ends, but would be good to know what the current conversations are around this. It's been tough being in limbo since March waiting to find out if I'll even get a shot at the dream job I was offered...

3 out of the 4 got their first choice of unit 🙂

Hi Ft1989
It's really hard to know what will happen. What is clear is the traffic levels that recruitment was carried out for in 2019 clearly are not going to be back for the foreseeable future. Current discussions are at least 3 years, which naturally would have an impact on staffing plans in any industry. But no one has a crystal ball. Nothing has been officially publicly announced around plans for those recruited or currently at the college, and it is right for those individuals to hear first before the general public, whatever the decision. I think some difficult discussions and decisions will take place over the coming weeks and months.

Hopefully sensible decisions are made and rather than simply chop people, keep those successful applicants on file to recall back for training when the demand increases again in a year/2 years/3 years time. Be under no illusion, there will always be a need for trainees in the future with an ageing workforce.

A sense of realism has to be maintained - traffic is currently down 50% across the UK at the busiest time of year. Some airports are down over 85% and I am sure we will see significant changes to the scope of airports on offer in the UK because of the pandemic impact. The demise of Flybe and Thomas Cook, and now a pandemic are major changes and all have had a cumulative effect on the UK aviation and airport scene.

With regards to postings - you must be prepared to go anywhere. Perhaps things are different now, but my course got very little input on choices - there was no "option lists" or "rank the order of units you would like to go to".... we finished our course, a few days later were handed a letter with the unit and start date on it.

Keep strong - don't give up on dreams! Just be prepared to have to wait a bit longer and in the mean time get as much life experience as you can because it will all come in very useful.

Traffic levels, as an absolute, are not particularly good as an indicator of staffing requirements. 2019 traffic levels were, and would be again, completely unmanageable without lots overtime (currently 'removed'), and continual deployment of office based staff. Let's say that, for example, and admittedly with a bit of a 'back of a fag packet' factoring, the current staffing levels would be needed to handle 6,000 movements a day. The 8,500 movements a day from 2019 may not return soon, or perhaps they will sooner than many predict, who knows, however 6,000 a day may make a return by, let's say, spring 2021. OK, levels are still a third down, but staffing requirement is the same, the impending retirement wave is still in place, and yet again, NATS seemingly are intent on cutting recruitment. I am very well aware immediate cost savings are required, but cannot help feeling anything other than at the very least continuing the 'current' pre-Covid recruitment numbers will result in a major staffing shortage in the not too distant future. It's almost as if NATS had never seen such a scenario before....

Equally, the current training timing is not that far off 3 years from entry to validity is it?

Thanks for this. Yeah, I hope that even in the worst case scenario, NATS will invite us back at a point in the (hopefully not-too-distant) future. Especially given the time and cost they've spent through the recruitment process, medicals, security checks etc.

The cohort due to start in April had their offers withdrawn last week...