Memorandum by the Guild of Air Traffic
Control Officers (GATCO) (NAT 1)
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Prior to the tragic events of 11 September
2001, the air transport industry was already experiencing a slow
down in growth. Following 11 September, the slow down turned into
a collapse of some market sectors and huge reductions in demand
across the whole industry sector. The reduction in the use of
air transport was expected to be over a prolonged period, pessimists
forecasting that it would be as much as three years before confidence
was restored. From every direction in the industry there was however
an urgent entreaty that air traffic service providers should not
cut back, but should use the breathing space to overcome shortfalls
in their system capacities and further to get ahead of and to
stay ahead of demand when it returned.
1.2 NATS is in the difficult position that
it earns a disproportionate share of its profits from the provision
of air traffic services over the North Atlantic. This sector collapsed
spectacularly, and the resultant reduction in profits led the
financial investors to demand urgent cost reductions in NATS operations.
NATS quite understandably concentrated on its safety and operational
obligations. Work has also continued to overcome existing shortfalls
in capacity. Any cuts fell on its non-operational activities such
as management, support, research and engineering operations. It
is many of these staff who would have carried out much of the
work to enable NATS to get ahead of and to stay ahead of demand
through technological advances and innovations.
2. PLANNED REDUCTIONS
IN ENGINEERING,
RESEARCH AND
DEVELOPMENT STAFF
2.1 We recommend the Select Committee focus
on likely reductions in engineering staff to be implemented under
the revised NATS Business Plan, and the impact of completed reductions
in contracting research and development staff. Our concern is
that reductions will be carried out, (and in respect of R&D
staff have already occurred) as a simple "numbers exercise"
with financial savings as the sole criteria. The easiest solutions
were sought, not necessarily the most practical, and contractors
went first irrespective of the relative value of their knowledge
and skills. It is erroneous to assume that the core skills in
research, development and infrastructure provision in NATS lie
with permanent staff. All too often the permanent staff are primarily,
the managers of programmes and projects, with many of the essential
skills provided by contractors.
2.2 The impact on NATS R&D is that some
decision support and computer assistance tools programmes were
in part postponed in haste because the contractors who worked
at the heart of these programmes were the easiest to dispose of
quickly. It is now impossible quickly to resurrect those programmes.
2.3 Engineering activity in NATS is carried
out in a whole range of areas of the company. Some is indeed involved
with maintenance and first line support. Other engineering activity
is involved with, for example, the strategic aspects of future
air traffic service technologies, safety management, infrastructure
provision, system change, NAS (National Airspace System Computer)
flight data processing software support and project management.
These activities should be assessed separately and any cuts carefully
targeted not made on a pro rata basis across the board. The Guild
believes that staff reductions on the basis of short-term opportunism
should be avoided at all costs.
2.4 We recommend that the Transport Sub-Committee
examine the NATS engineering review which we consider may be driven
more by the need to reduce costs at the behest of the banks than
the need to maintain the cohesive nature of infrastructure planning
and provision required by a major ATS provider.
2.5 The Guild would remind the Sub-Committee
that the four-man advisory team appointed by Sir Roy McNulty to
examine the safety proposals of the finalists bidding for the
NATS PPP in a minute to ministers that the Nimbus Consortium's
bid was ". . . not a satisfactory approach to safety management."
The team, which included Phil Bennetts of Safety Management Experts
and Jim Passmore (former head of safety for British Airways),
was particularly worried about training and work patterns and
about reports that some 1,200 air traffic maintenance staff would
be made redundant and sub-contractors employed, as happened at
Railtrack.
3. FINANCIAL
POSITIONS OF
THE TWO
NATS COMPANIES, NERL AND
NSL
3.1 The Guild suggests that the Sub-Committee
should examine separately, the financial positions of the two
NATS companies—NATS En-route Limited (NERL) and NATS Services
Limited (NSL). Whilst we acknowledge that the income derived by
NERL is significantly down we do not believe this to be the case
for NSL. This latter NATS airports business has fixed-price contracts
with seven of its 14 airport customers (Belfast Intl, Birmingham,
Cardiff, Farnborough, London City, Luton and Manchester) with
direct-charging in place at the remainder (Aberdeen, Edinburgh,
Gatwick, Glasgow, Heathrow, Southampton and Stansted). Although
at a number of airports the aircraft movements are down, we believe
these contracts mostly continue to return operating profits.
3.2 The London airports (excluding City)
also generate income for NERL because NSL pays NERL for the provision
of Approach Radar services as provided from the London Terminal
Control Centre. Therefore, the financial situation particularly
as it applies to NSL may not be as dire as it appears.
3.3 Finally on the specific issue of NATS'
finances, the Guild has difficulty with the rationale whereby
the Treasury appears willing to approve the payment of some £300
million to the new railway infrastructure company, does not oppose
the issue of "Letters of Comfort" to the strategic business
partners involved in the proposed London Underground PFI, yet
is only prepared to sanction the payment of £30 million as
a loan to NATS, and at commercial rates, despite the fact that
the Government continues to be the major shareholder in NATS.
4. THE CENTRE
STRATEGY
4.1 We mentioned earlier that some decision
support and computer assistance tools programmes were postponed.
This was in part because the contractors working on those projects
could be dispensed with easily. Almost all of the programmes under
development to support capacity increases in London Terminal Control
were postponed, although to its credit NATS agreed to bring forward
the introduction of enhanced surveillance capability by using
Mode S radar. To enable NATS to rid itself of the cost of the
West Drayton site it was proposed to bring forward the relocation
of London Terminal Control to Swanwick. It was assumed that the
demand for which the tools were targeted would not be needed so
soon, and that as a relocated London Terminal Control would require
a new systems platform these programmes could be postponed. What
was not expected was that growth would appear to be returning
so soon and moreover that the Airline Group would require these
tools, and not just because of capacity benefits achieved through
optimising runway capacity. These tools would also enable pilots
to know with some accuracy their range to touchdown. Such knowledge
enables aircraft to fly environmentally beneficial "continuous
descent approach" procedures. The loss of the contractors
who previously worked on those projects we believe, means that
it will take some time to reinstate them.
4.2 We also mentioned earlier that a disproportionate
amount of NATS' profitability is gained from providing jointly
(with the Irish) an Oceanic Control service in delegated airspace
under contract to ICAO through a Regional Air Navigation Services
Agreement. A permanent loss of this contract would presumably
have serious financial consequences for NATS. We have already
seen the impact on NATS of a short-term collapse in this market.
The provision of Oceanic Services is an area of operation that
is most suitable for the use of existing technologies, especially
ADS and datalink communications between pilots and controllers.
These technologies, utilising satellites for both enhanced surveillance
and communications relay, remove the need for multiple air traffic
service providers over the North Atlantic. Whilst NATS has significant
technical competence in this technology it has been slow to implement
it operationally and has, as a result, been perceived to be the
least ambitious provider over the North Atlantic. It has lost
the public relations initiative on this issue and is considered
by some in CNS/ATM industry to be vulnerable if a service provision
review were to be undertaken by ICAO.
4.3 One of NATS' competitors—NavCanada—has
just implemented an advanced system that includes Gander OACC,
which (like Oakland OACC in the US) can utilise ADS and other
datalink services for aircraft beyond radar range.
4.4 Since the UK's auspices of the North
Atlantic east of Longitude 30 degrees West is a delegation of
responsibility it it not unreasonable to question whether the
continued delay to NSC might put NATS in a weakened position if
NavCanada (and also perhaps, the Irish Civil Aviation Authority)
were able to convince ICAO that they could now provide an enhanced
oceanic control service with a consequent improvement to the operation's
target level of safety. This could have serious income implications
for NERL.
5. CONTROLLER
RECRUITMENT AND
TRAINING
5.1 Prior to any downturn in business, NATS
had ambitions to significantly increase controller recruitment
and training. Like many other service providers it has found it
difficult to balance the numbers of operational controllers at
operational units against the number of those controllers required
at training centres to train new entrant controllers. For NATS
this problem was exacerbated by the need to coincidentally open
its new Swanwick Centre, with its associated training conversion
programme. The sudden downturn therefore led NATS to adopt a less
ambitious programme for training enroute controllers which the
Guild believes could be more easily supported. NATS has therefore,
had to curtail ambitious plans to get ahead of known future shortages
of controllers.
6. CONCLUSION
This evidence is submitted by the Guild of Air
Traffic Control Officers (GATCO) to the House of Commons Select
Committee on Transport.
April 2002
GLOSSARY
| ADS | Automatic Dependent Surveillance
|
| CNS/ATM | Communications, Navigation, Surveillance/Air Traffic Management
|
| FIR/UIR | Flight Information Region/Upper Information Region
|
| ICAO | International Civil Aviation Organisation
|
| NavCanada | Canadian not-for-profit Trust Company providing air traffic services
|
| NSC | New Scottish Centre |
| OACC | Oceanic Area Control Centre
|
| Shanwick | Shanwick (Shannon and Prestwick) Oceanic Control Service
|
| 
