Experienced controllers going to Spain?
 

How hard is it to do that?

Fairly Easy.
 

I went for a week once. Not too tricky if you embark in a country with established travel links. I caught an aeroplane. Nice and warm too.

Info
 

If you are trying to apply for a job as a ATCO in Spain I think it is easier to become a grave digger in USA,meaning it is impossible.

You need to be Spanish citizen and even so you will have to start from the beggining with school,training etc.That is if you get lucky to be accepted.

Try somewhere else,this is my friendly advice.

Gianni

i must agree with gianni17. It is extremely hard for a spanish citizen to get in let alone someone else who is very experienced at controlling.

Furtermore, you have to go back to basics and go back to school despite possibly having 5, 10, 15+ years under your belt.

It might be better to go somewhere else.

Ok,than I will ask question: Why it is like that?:hmm:

The highest general unemployment rate within Old Europe plus The Best T&C within whole europe ,and further as well.
And 50+ millions of citizens,
Do you need more reasons?:E

I had heard you also need a degree from a Spanish University. i could be talking utter boll$cks though.

Utter cajones I think!!:ok:

Buy a euromillions lottery ticket, your odds of success are much much higher
:E

Just a thought but can you speak fluent Spanish? Even if the above obstacles were not in place, would you expect 'in' centre co-ordination etc to be carried out in English?

30W

You don't need to be a Spanish national to apply, but you will not get any points for being an experienced controller either, and indeed you will be tested to make sure you have a very good level of Spanish.

At least that is the way it is as of now. We don't know what the future lies ahead, and the single license directive was transposed just a week ago.

Cheers,
Juan.

Yes, you can
 

I´ve heard something has changed.
Any further info?

Watching the news this morning they announced that now any european citizen with a high school degree can try to get into the training. Guess they are following the rest of Europe in this aspect.

Why they want experienced ATCO's to start from the beginning ? :rolleyes:

Would anyone care to translate this..?
Jaque a los controladores aéreos: el Gobierno suaviza las normas de acceso a la profesión - Cotizalia.com

Hi guys,

It's true it's supposed to be easier for you guys to come over and work for Aena from now on since our beloved goverment passed a decree that even allow ATCOs that do not speak spanish to be hired. :eek::eek:

It is part of the strategy to scare the crap out of us and make us think they are going to replace us all.

IMO, there is 2 things they may have not thought through:
1- European ATCOs are not more stupid than we are :ok:, so I believe they will unionize as soon as they arrive, like 96% of us are. So they'll have a similar problem but with people not just from Spain.
2- In a country with 4 million unemployed (unofficially almost 5 million since the government doesn't count people attending one of the courses they offer), how is people gonna take if they hire 2000 foreigners?

BTW, sorry for any inconveniences caused but it's not our responsibility. I'll just say we are NOT on strike. Aena did the roster for Christmas here in the Canaries when a 15% traffic reduction was forecasted. The actual reduction was 2%. Also, the roster was designed on a per-day-of-the week basis, meaning they allocated the same number of ATCOs for December 8th and December 22nd.:confused:

They included in the roster colleagues in maternity/paternity leave and long term sick leaves, for example. When last minute they tried to cover with overtime, most of us refused because we warned the company in October of these circumstances, had already plans with our families and where quite angry with the media campaigning against us (like publishing our salaries almost everyday and lying blatantly about them). In my particular case, they called me in December 30th at 1pm to fill in for January 1st in the morning. I wasn't even on the island when they called. As you can imagine, I said No thanks!

Underneath all this campaign against us is the intention of the government of selling Aena to private companies to pay part of its 11000 million euros debt due to the recent years' craze of building a new airport in every province in Spain (there's 50 provinces and 47 airports), some as profitable as La Rioja or Huesca, with less than 10 arrivals PER WEEK!

And for some of you thinking we make too much money, our offer to the company implied a 20% reduction in our salaries, but they refused it.

I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have about all this mess.

Cheers!

what steps need to be taken to get hired by AENA?

well given some spanish controllers are earning 800k a year I'm suprised there isn't a stampede of people applying for jobs over there.

Outrage in Spain over soaring air traffic controllers’ pay - Times Online

Hi Guys, just a quick intro. I'm a BA pilot who commutes from Spain.

It is really disappointing that even The Times seems to have joined the misinformation bandwagon. There was ONE controller who last year earned 900K Euros working extra hours. Every bugger and his dog comes up to me and wants to talk about the same.

It's true that the norm is more like 300K euros a year for what amounts to about 12-14 days a month (sometimes even less) and they are saying that that is 3x what an English controller earns. Well, that's as may be but considering the slide in the pound in the past couple of years it seems a little unfair to say that.

Also, what they really, really don't tell you is that the very government who are trying to bully the ATCO's into submission are really the biggest burden on the Spanish economy which in turn is the biggest burden on the EU. Zapatito (our Mr Bean president) has about 300 advisers - and frankly for the job he does he may as well have none! We also have one of the largest civil services packed full of lazy, good for nothing ignorant people you could possibly imagine.

So, yes they earn a lot of money and (I have to say) not as good as our English controllers but of all the skilled and specialised workers in Spain, they do a very good job which is more than you can say for most of the rest.

This summer there may be some disruption and it will make the rest of Europe's days a little longer; and you will be told all sorts of lies and tales of high earning lazy Spanish ATCO's but just remember what I said.

All, thanks for looking after us up there.

Crikey, I always thought the appalling standard of ATC in Spain was due to lack of resources and poor pay and morale.

I now see that the problem is the opposite!

It isn't THAT bad here. Believe me, there are airports in the US which are FAR, FAR worse (not all, before you bite my head off). Not gonna be specific 'cos I don't wanna upset anyone.

enginerelight,
Are you really a BA pilot?.
Your comments make me doubt about it.

Gibraltar's nice, when you've crossed the border and can look back from 10 miles north !!!

On the beach :ok:

Well, that's your prerogative. I have flown both into and over Spain many times (although not into for a while now). It's a personal opinion but one shared, I assure you, by a great deal of my colleagues on Long Haul. There again, as I say, we only use the airways and even then only to go to Africa an ocasionally to GRU. The shorthaul boys may have another opinion; conversely, they don't fly to the US.

Talking to one of our trainers recently he said to me: There are those who don't know, and know that they don't know; those who know, but don't know that they know; and those who think that they know, but don't know that they don't know. And the most dangerous in this business is the latter.

In fact, I'll let you in on a little secret: we have an event monitoring system called sesma on all our aircraft. The highest frequency of events nearly always come from airports in the US: carrying excess speed, high on app, rushed app, and last but not least, the highest number of G/A's of anywhere on our network. True it is, we have a lot of flights there but even so.....

Not an aviator myself but a spanish ATC...that doesn't work in Spain.

Not that long ago I was Flying to NYC. Landing was a bit weird and when asking "how come we made a 90º turn seconds before landing?" I was told that was THE landing. I find it difficult to grasp that an airport such as JFK has a procedure as such to land...it seems more like tales of old times. But still happens nowadays in what should be some of the most advanced airspace in the world.

I can't recall the name of the approach but I believe it to be PAWLING 2. Anyways, you basically have to point the nose towards a RESIDENTIAL hill, and try an acquire visually a path formed by flashing lights. There's 2 paths, with different interval flashing lights each, for 2 different runways. When performed at night you also have to keep in mind that there are street lights and home's lights in between (don't get confused with those). And if you do all that right you're performing a 90º turn 1 mile from the threshold...scary enough if you ask me.

So, I can't say that the quality of ATC in Spain is better or worse than anywhere else but I can say that, from my limited experience with the American way of doing things, the yanks way does raise some eyebrows.

A.

Try a Canarsie in silly winds and 800ft cloud base. They only scrap it after the third go around.

I thought that WAS the canarsie approach that andrijander was describing?

ATC in Spain
 

Hello, fellows!

if you are considering coming to Spain to work as an ATC, give this thread a look:

http://www.pprune.org/atc-issues/404...ish-dream.html


Enjoy!