Air Traffic Controllers
 

Are RAF air traffic controllers, trained at Shawbury, up to the standard required to control traffic at Northolt? This is in regard to the airprox last year between an A380 and a Gulfstream, the controller became distracted and concerns were also raised at the manpower levels.

Distraction is a human factor, it can and does happen at any airfield regardless of it being a military or civilian, big or small.

Is the question regarding the ATC school at Shawbury stem from the fact it's a RW base?

Duplicate post

As far as I'm aware nowadays, students from the Air Traffic Control School at Shawbury no longer train on 'live' traffic in the tower at Shawbury, using simulators which can simulate literally any type of aircraft so implying they are only used to helicopter traffic is totally misleading. They are all trained to the highest standards (as are civil controllers trained by NATS at Whitely) and if at the end of the course they have not met the required standard, they do not graduate and are often re-coursed.
The 'incident' appears to have been caused by the oncoming controller being distracted while an aircraft was being vectored for the easterly approach at Northolt which includes a 'dogleg' turning final at about (I think) 4nm (please correct me if I'm wrong); the aircraft cannot be positioned on long final for Northolt due to traffic on the 09L ILS at Heathrow so it requires a great amount of concentration to achieve the ideal final approach track.
Northolt have separate frequencies allocated for 'approach' and 'final' directors so I'm surprised as it appeared to be so busy that the supervisor wasn't keeping a better eye on things.

haltonapp (#1),

After five years of flying in war, and a further five years in peace, I was an RAF ATC from 1955 to 1972, including 3 years as an instructor at Shawbury. But no experience on Area Radar. (We have a MPN11 on frequency here, who can remedy that deficiency).

IMHO, Door Slider (#2) has answered your question. But your unspoken question is: Does the Civil ATC Training system produce a "superior product" (for Civil purposes) to the RAF (Shawbury) system ? I leave that open for discussion, but will only note that many RAF Controllers, after the end of their SSCs, made successful careers in Civil Air Traffic Control.

I think we may have a hot potato here !

Danny42C.

Adopt the brace position!

Both paths share similar skill sets as required by the job, and also different 'specific' skills as dictated by the unit you work at post-college, hence why each unit requires it's own training plan and validation. (Mil traffic operate differently to civil, etc).

No unit has the same airspace/traffic/restrictions etc so leaving the ATC college, whether it be RAF or Civil, will not make you eligible to walk in to a unit and be able to work the traffic in a safe, orderly & expeditious manner. You merely leave the college with a licence to learn at the unit you're posted to.

Airprox's can, and do, happen at any unit, regardless of where the staff were trained, so to imply those trained at Shawbury may not be up to the standard to work Northolt is absolute bolleaux. It's a challenging job wherever you were trained, and wherever you're posted.

Does military air traffic control deal with more circuits and touch and go's, while civil ATC is more straight in approaches and full stop landings?
On the fast jet units I've worked on, it seems there's always a wave or two of aircraft each doing multiple circuits and bumps, especially when you need to drive past the end of the runway at shift change !

I like to think I got the best of both worlds. I did a 3 year course gaining civil ratings for aerodrome, approach, approach radar, area and area radar. My field training for area radar was carried out at a joint military/civil area radar unit (Lindholme) so I was able to work alongside military controllers learning what they did, then for my final posting I was sent to an MOD(PE) unit (Farnborough) where not only did I have to learn military procedures as well as operating civil procedures and where I would often use approach radar and area radar ratings at the same time, but when it came my turn, I was sent to Shawbury for a PAR course.

gr4techie (#8),

...Originally Posted by 360BakTrak
Adopt the brace position!

My opinion exactly ! When I started instructing at Shawbury, the thinking was that we were turning out Air Traffic Controllers (don't laugh, read my story below).

Later I came to think that we were turning out skeletons of Air Traffic Controllers, who would be clothed in the flesh of experience at their Stations. At the end I realised that we were really running a big Aptitude Test - if they could hack the Course, they could probably learn to do the real job at the desk.

But the practice did not always follow the theory ..... The newly minted D. turned up at Strubby in '55. "Welcome aboard", said SATCO, "we've been waiting for you - you're on Approach Monday afternoon - Flt Lt So-and-so will show you around - Good luck !"

In defence of that, I must remind readers that, in those benighted days, the Shawbury output was almost all ex-war aircrew, mostly pilots and navs, who had a fair idea of the job anyway. (It was said that the immediate postwar RAF Air Traffic Control Branch was set up as a Sunset Home for all the good old has-beens and neverwozzers of wartime leftovers). But I think that was just sour grapes. ...

Danny42C.

Northern Dairies
 

Chevron,
That would have been Northern radar then, with PRESTON AIRWAYS up at the back with, IIRC, a single suite consisting of 2 controllers, 2 assistants, 1 tracker and 1 height finder. (Yes folks, 3 FIRs! Scottish, Preston and London).

It was, from my point of view as a servant of the Blue Line Master Race, a brilliant job, especially the controllers assistant part. I suspect that those of us who served at ATCRUs like the dairies and had to manually track 8 returns at once can still beat their grandchildren on modern computer games.

A342

p.s. I think my controller, who instructed me one night, to take 2 pairs of Lightenings on recovery to Binbrook, while he was playing Bridge up on the bridge with the co-ordinator and two assistants, made his 7 no trumps (or was it 7 spades?) Oh and Northern was JUST outside the Midland overhead!

I was there in '73 and I seem to recall that on the civil UAS suite, we operated with 2 assistants writing up flight data on the edge lit board between the 2 radar consoles plus 2 trackers, one for each console; the height finder wasn't permanently manned; you just shouted 'height please' and hoped someone was there to look at it.
I think I rather 'freaked out' some of the RAF guys one sunday. Mainland and North Sea positions were bandboxed and whereas the RAF guys dealt with off route traffic with a maximum of 4 tracks each, suddenly I had 16 tracks on frequency, fortunately all were on known routings and most of them were overflights and did not require climb or descent so I was quite relaxed, but the poor tracker trying to deal with 16 tracks was working his b@lls off!
A third console well away from the 2 upper airspace ones was used as a joint operation with Boulmer. It was called the 'Northern Joint Radar Service Area' (forerunner of 'Pennine Radar') and was for traffic below FL245 to/from Newcastle and Teeside which was leaving/joining controlled airspace at Pole Hill. Although this control position was moved occasionally, it was usually next to the console occupied by the co-ordinator who kept a 'log' of levels in use in the Lindholme T82 overhead; same type of radar as Midland but apparently with a much smaller overhead - wonder why that was?
My mentor did one session with me on this console when I started my training and thereafter he stayed in the rest room for extra tea/extra fag whenever we were rostered on it!

I did my time at Northern in 75 & 76.

Happy days.

Late on parade ... been following the BA chaos on another Forum and other places over the last couple of days!

During my 29 years in the RAF, I spent 8 years as a Tower controller [including time as SATCO and Local Examining Officer) and another 8 years in Area Radar (including Senior Supervisor, OC Training Sqn and LEO) at Joint units (Eastern Radar and LATCC). So I guess I can claim to have a reasonable spread of experience, including those years in a joint Mil/Civ environment.

I think the OP's question is 'reasonable' in the context he has drawn it, but there's no real difference when it comes down to the reality. ANY controller, of either persuasion, has potential to drop a ball occasionally and the incident in question shows how easily it can happen. The Airprox occurred simply because the Northolt controller was distracted exactly at the time when the Gulfstream should have been turned inbound. Any controller, when juggling several balls at once, need to remember which ball is the most important at any given moment ... and that priority changes dynamically every few seconds.

In a perfect world, either of the following could have prevented the Airprox:

• Delay the controller handover until the Gulfstream was turned inbound. Literally a 'critical path'.
• Prioritise the Gulfstream and tell Heathrow Director to "Wait". Not easy to do, but see previous bullet!

Easy to say, in the comfort of my Study, of course. But if the Northolt controller had been Civil, the same scenario could have unfolded. That 07 approach must be a right sod to manage!

Have a picture of Eastern Civil. Of course, it would normally be much darker than that! :)
.
.

MPN11 (#14),
You have put your finger on it: "To err is human"; the man or woman who cannot make a mistake has not been born yet. (But, "To forgive is not Company Policy" ?)

Nic pic of all you poor battery hens in your gloomy henhouse ! Fresh (air-con) air, blue skies (occasionally), and starry nights, under wall-to-wall octagonal glass, suited old D. much better !

Danny.

Danny
Not always at Northern ... there were instances when Airwork(?), the engineers, failed to turn off the air-con when the 'Honey Cart' was going about its business by the air-con intake!!!http://cdn.pprune.org/images/smilies/pukey.gif

a literal sh*t hitting the fan.

We were obviously lucky at Eastern. We had proper plumbing and sewage disposal ;)

Similar to Northern but only one control position instead of two; I presume one of the positions was occupied by the tracker, but it shows the edge lit board very well.
Data was fed to the assistant at this board by an electrowriter. One day at Northern, we were working away as normal when there was a loud 'pop' and a flash of light. The electrowriter had blown up!! I never saw the 2 assistants move so fast!!

@haltonapp - yes, of course they are. RAF ATC training, examination, validation, standardisation and supervision are all tightly controlled, documented and assured. As has been said already, HF happens. That is not to make light of the incident, but no system is fool-proof, especially with a human in the loop.

@Door_Slider - ATC training and RW training have nothing to do with each other at Shawbury. ATC training is all simulated.

@chevvron - Live tower training (using dedicated Jet Provosts) ended in the early 90s (I went through JATCC in 93 and was on an all-sim course).

One of the reasons for moving Northolt Approach down to Swanwick was to have the Northolt controllers sat with the Heathrow team in order to remove some of the coordination issues associated with such a tight piece of airspace.

Two controllers at ERD with double-header consoles, as shown. The Tracker occupies a specially-equipped dedicated position ... possibly the one in the far background.

Ah sorry; in my day Eastern only had one control position for the North Sea sector on a shared frequency with Northern (got a vague recollection that was weekdays only but may be wrong), so what was the other console for?
Had a thought; could this be Eastern after Lindholme had closed thus allowing for two sectors (North Sea and Mainland)? Eastern didn't close until much later did it?

Northolt radar is done from the TC part of Swanwick to integrate with the London TMA controllers at NATS. It works well, however this once again proves the issues that the branch faces.

Nothing new. When I was at LATCC in 1971 we moved into the Mediator 1 room where the 4 main en-route sectors each had an RAF controller on them to integrate their OAT with the GAT.
Called LJAO, then SEJAO; I presume it goes under another name nowadays.
Oh and off route, the civil and military FIS suites were next to each other in their own little control room next to D & D - very convenient!

Pedant mode on:

It was SEJAO then LJAO - but no harm done and you're forgiven!!!! :ok:

Pedant mode off.

Military ATM Training
 

Haltonapp,

I've been an RAF ATCO for 40+ years and have served at various airfields in the UK and Germany, as well as over 3 years in LJAO, working alongside my civil colleagues. I did the JATCC in the early 1970s, served as an instructor in the mid 1980s and am currently one of the staff at SAOC, the new name for CATCS, RAF Shawbury, so I think I'm well qualified to comment on your remark about military ATM training. The JATCC today is longer than the 16 week JATCC I completed and much more comprehensive because of the changes to rules and legislation. Furthermore, although live flying for ATM training ended in the late 1980s, the current simulators are perfectly suitable for the task and will be updated within the next five years under Project Marshall. In other words, those that graduate from the JATCC today are perfectly well prepared for the duties they then undertake at their units.

When I first began my career, an old military ATCO said to me that if you never admit to having had an incident you've either not being an ATCO for very long or you've never been anywhere really busy or you're not telling the truth. Unfortunately, incidents involving ATCOs, whether civil or military, will always take place and, in the overall scheme of things, this was by no means the worst. I was in LJAO when the airmiss between a Vulcan and an Air France Concorde occurred on the Seaford sector - now that really was a very close call!

Visitation

Thanks for correcting me.

Sorry, not that intimately acquainted with their working procedures. Possibly split E/W traffic, but that's only a guess - someone here must know the answer.
(I was ERD Jun 70-Sep 73 & Oct 76-Sep 78)

Greetings to fellow Mil SEJAO controllers (Sep 73-Dec 74 only, before being posted to HQ MATO) :cool:
I was apparently the first to be pushed straight into SEJAO after a few weeks getting an AC(L) endorsement in the MAS room, on the basis of my 4+ years experience at ERD. A most interesting and stimulating environment, with (IIRC) only one major cock-up on my part!
When producing estimates for Mil crossings, one quickly learned that an F-4/F-111 took 5 minutes to cover the length of a chinagraph pencil on the flat-top displays ;)

I guess that was OK so long as you did not sharpen the pencil.......

hehehe :)

Propelling pencils, of course!

s'funny - I always remember having to extract the RP estimates from the MYRIAD touchwire display for LJAO...... :hmm:

Not to mention 'all crossings via WOBUN' to the extent that RACAL produced a lovely miniature TRN-26 TACAN (anyone know what happened to it?) so that USAFE aircraft could route that way, accurate like!!

Firstly, and most importantly, they are.

The incident in question was a simple case of distraction. The controller was operating band boxed due to manning issues, and was engaged in a coordination phone call with anothe sector. It is an extremely tight bit of airspace, where it is imperative that the offset base/finals turn is made at exactly the right time; too early, and the PAR will not be able to lock on (the dog leg is at the extreme of the PAR azimuth coverage), too late, and you end up potentially interacting with Heathrow.

The incident highlighted that the task should have been split, thus man I is required to achieve this; something that is not sorted over night as you need to train the new people. Secondly, it highlighted the dangers of distraction, something that has been used to good effect with our HF sessions. Thirdly, it proved that the safety nets; Controller scan (from Fin), STCA and now PIT work to reduce the chances of an aircraft accident.

Perhaps the real issue is manning levels - more and more RAF stations seem to be short of trained ATC such that they have to 'close' to allow lunch breaks etc - this has happened this year at Brize, Boscombe ad Shawbury to my knowledge.

I have heard a statement recently at Shawbury that if all the applicants for ATC who went through the AFCO doors were all to pass the JATCC the trade would still be 20% under strength.

KPax
 

I should think that the RAF ATCO salary scale compared with NATS would put a lot of folk off - top whack at Swanwick/Heathrow after about 15 years is more than Air Commodore top increment and without all the BS!

I guess the service might be slightly ahead in the first 4 or 5 years then NATS pay races ahead.

Well, if the AFCO staff pointed out what a short path it is to riches with NATS, they might find it easier to get folk to Shawbury.

Not everyone wants to stay in the same place forever, when there are overseas tours ... oh, forget I started that, I'm almost 60 years out of date!

Looking through the wrong end of the telescope, and vaguely knowing what it's like in the RAF nowadays, I'd probably (sadly) be inclined to take the Civil route.

The RAF is not what it was, for so many reasons.

As an AirTrafficer who never laboured in the dungeons of Area Radar (there to sit like rows of poor battery hens, never to see the light of day), but dwelt in a Tower, where there were blue skies (occasionally), fluffy white clouds, green grass, birdies, aeroplanes (even if only computer-generated phantoms), and all life passing below your air-conditioned octagon eyrie, might I suggest that, if a publicity drive were to stress these points, you might get more applicants ?

It is the best job in G.D. - bar flying (if you dodge Area Radar as aforesaid), comes with cups of tea on the hour from beauteous Assistants, what more d'ye want (Promotion ? Forget it !) Remember that the Branch was originally set up to provide a "Sunset Home" for all the old hairy ex-aircrew from WWII who did not like the idea of the cold peacetime world outside.

[email protected] (#33),

..."they have to 'close' to allow lunch breaks etc - this has happened this year at Brize, Boscombe and Shawbury * to my knowledge"... So they are short, and have (presumably) had to rob the Tower crews to keep Area radar staffed. Why not put more of your smarter Assistants up for S.S. Commissions, because obviously the pay rates are insufficient to attract external candidates ?

Note: * Shawbury used to be manned by the School staff in turn as R&R from their instructional duties. Should've been plenty of them there.

Another possibility: GD Pilots and WSOs could do a ground tour on ATC after a "Short Course" at Shawbury. At Linton '62-'64, the RN Controllers were Seaman Branch on ground tour, after which they went back to sea (so they told me - Union Jack ?).
Mind you, at the rate they're closing Stations, they should have ATCs coming out of their ears !

Danny.

Danny, they make them Sgts now. Direct entry as well as promoting assistants.

Commissioned Officers are becoming rare in towers, and in Area Radar.

A short course for aircrew is not the answer, more people who want to do air traffic is what's required. I suspect that part of the reason that so few people doing it want to recommend it, is that everywhere is short staffed. Also relevant is that as one of the very few blue suit jobs on camp, ATC are getting dicked for secondary duties more than they used to.

I loved my time in Area Radar, I dreaded it, based on what everyone in towers told me, but once I mastered the art of chinagraph and coffee in the dark, it was great. Nowadays the average Area Radar unit looks like a call centre.

Crikey, oh blimey, I can see why PPrune has the reputation it does (on my squadron at least) for being the history corner! Hopefully the orignal poster got the answer they wanted?

If there was ever a need for some spare ATC skills to be dished out then someone should look at how our large aircraft with sky pointing radars can be used to help deconflict and point our smaller aircraft in the right direction. If we can do similar things for nasties etc. etc.