Thank Mr Blanco for the new ATM efficiency!

I’ve been working as a controller for about thirteen years. Until a couple of years ago, in Madrid (my closest example) we used to try to get as many aircraft as possible onto the left runway (shortest taxi). Until a couple of years ago all of us endeavoured to shorten routes as much as possible. Indeed, each traffic –as we say- arriving at Madrid Barajas International Airport probably saved more than ten minutes on average if we take flying and taxi time into account. I have no reason to suppose events didn’t happen likewise in the rest os Spain.
This meant a huge effort by controllers. But we are well aware that each flying minute might mean 50 kilos (or around 25 pounds sterling) of fuel. It was a time of happy crews and passengers. And we, the controllers, ended our workday with a grimace of satisfaction after a very beneficial day of work.
Since then we’ve had to read circulars about noise reduction compelling us to even out traffic between the runways, reprimands from Flow Control trying to ensure that routes are not shortened lest overcrowding occur further along the line, letters by operations managers, or even by Eurocontrol, underlining the need to attentively follow the flight plan in all of its terms.
But above everything else, we have lately had to withstand the impositions of the Minister of Development. With the intention of “optimising” the system, and failing completely to take a grasp of the basic evidence that there’s a shortage of air traffic controllers, he has imposed an increase in working hours together with a reduction in the resting periods.. He has also handed operational management to irresponsible and incompetent engineers who are incapable of changing configurations, or regulating traffic sector capacities at the right time, or giving priority to the necessary flights. On top of this, no consideration at all to human factors. Consequently, we have had overloads, delays and, worst of all, far many more near misses than before.
The ATCOs employer, Aena, enjoying the company of it’s ‘new’ bully cousin, has exerted all kinds of abuse, amongst them, disposing of workers’ days off with no previous advice. What we called the “express shifts”.
Endured we have the draconian impositions, which probably haven’t been equalled in any other civilised country in the world. But it hasn’t been without consequences. Depression and resort to tranquillisers or sleeping pills has been the norm. And the medical leaves, hundreds of them. Some for heart attacks or angina pectoris or even controllers having been stretchered out of their workplace, consciousless. Fortunately, there have been no suicides committed, as did happen in France Télécom, who had used the same consultancy company, McKinsey, as the Spanish Government.
To solve the medical leave problem (absenteeism, they called it), instead of reducing the exerted pressure, the State machinery decided to impose fines of up to 4.500.000 € for faking illness. No typing error. As you might have guessed, the workplace doctor is who’s in charge of deciding whether you’re fit or you’re pretending to be ill. He/she is paid by the same employer, Aena. The doctor has his own pressure in order to keep people at work. And you can’t even get a straightforward report immediately, you need to go through a lengthy process that involves complaining to the Head of the operations room and collecting the final report, many hours later, from the Human Resources department
Sometimes the medical service commits the atrocity of sending controllers with extremely high blood pressure back to their sectors. This isn’t the place to dispute the professionalism of doctors, but it’s a basic fact that they are unable to determine whether one is able to work; they have never seen a cotroller at work (I asked them). Their job depending on it, they would rather exert pressure upon us than the Company. Why don’t they share the responsibility if serious illness or even an airprox results from their decisions? They state that they are not under pressure to give us the thumbs up to go home, but they also express the fact that the report needs “objective parameters” and it is also complicated and five pages long!
Controllers in Spain have been struggling to cope with the pressure for over a year now. Under these circumstances, the only way to try to guarantee safety to both traffic and ourselves is to shield ourselves behind procedures and increase traffic separation, thereby hugely reducing efficiency in favour of safety.
In this environment I casually encounter an envelope in my letterbox. It contains a Eurocontrol project, called AIRE (air, in Spanish). It proposes lots of analyses of aircraft trajectories under “continuous descent”. The same idea of “free flight” created decades ago. The project’s aim is fantastic: considering that aviation contaminates, both atmospheric and acoustically, let’s enforce measures through which all pollution is reduced. Thereafter, hordes of Eurocontrol bureaucrats and technocrats involve dozens of civil servants who devote loads of hours filling in stacks of paperwork, so as to lead to multiple conferences that will show air traffic controllers the best way to do what we already did, very much more profficiently, a couple of years ago.
Controllers are well aware of what needs to be done in order to save fuel, time, noise and money. In fact, it wouldn’t be hard to prove that what has now been saved in controllers’ wages has been squandered many times over in broken shedules, crew hotels, controllers’ medical treatments, illness and leave paid for by the Social Security system and compensation to airlines for excessive fuel waste. Almost all these costs, as opposed to controllers’ pay, come from the taxpayer’s pocket. Probably, billions of euro. There is one person at the end of the responsibility chain for all this: the Development Minister José Blanco López.
And that is where I wonder: what has Mr Blanco, apart from destroying the efficiency of the Spanish Air Traffic Control System and and using the whole issue as a smoke curtain to hide all sorts of antisocial measures, achieved with all this? Ah, yes, he managed to increase the vote expectancy of the Socialist Party for a few moments.
Returning to my ecology argument, how are controllers going to be motivated and retrained now in order to get back to what we previously did quite well? When are we going to be left alone to work efficiently once again? When are these useless politicians going to admit that all this nonsense of flight fee control was absurd and inconsistent demagoguery (as well as admitting that if Airport fees are considered, they really have not been reduced at all). Honestly, will anyone change their business or holiday destination for the fifference of 20 or 30 cents in the price of their ticket?
These excesses of shortsighted and incompetent politicians have probably had the worst ever effect on one of the Spain’s most effective and reliable means of income: Tourism. I’m afraid we will all be paying the price for years to come.
Why didn’t they just state the end to be achieved and leave the pros (pilots and sontrollers) to do it?
If, on the other hand, their real intention was just to destroy the system, to make it less valuable in order to facilitate the sale to private groups, thereby diluting colossal investment errors or budget noncompliances, or just to show a pleasant face to the equally incompetent european bureaucrats, then forget all I’ve said, because from that viewpoint the job has been excellent. I just don’t understand it.
Nevertheless, I feel that citizens have the right to know that they have had their pockeys emptied for the squandering in absurd infrastructures, in budget excesses, and they’re still bearing the burden. And flights are delayed and probably not as safe. In exchange, they can feel happy because the average family is going to make a huge saving on next Summer’s holidays to Spain : exactly one euro!.