Early retirement: the new picture.

My friend L. became an ATCO in 1974. Ever since she started she was promised that she would be allowed to retire from her shift activity after a certain number of  years. The latest agreement allowed her to retire -keeping her pay- at 52 after 30 years of shifts, or at 55 after 17 years. She could have done either, but she decided to stay: her working conditions and rest were such that her night-time recovery was OK, and she still enjoyed her job and could do it safely. 

Recently there has been a change in timetables (once again, imposed). Mornings start at 6.45 or 7.30 instead of 8. Evenings end at 10.30 or 11.30 instead of 10. Under the new conditions, she now wants to leave -her pay halved- as she is over 60.

L. has decided that she has had enough, and she should be able to retire. She deserves it and she has already done her share. Aena has said that 62 years of age is enough. But they have told L. that, considering she is still operational, she can't go. 

Mr Lema still hasn't admitted there is a severe shortage of ATCO's. Eurocontrol has. Even the Press has. But Mr Lema won't. Conditions are so bad in Spain that colleagues are fleeing to Germany, Switzerland, even Bahrein. Others are reducing their hours, according to legislation, to care for their children or their ageing parents. 

Aena has to keep as many ATCO's on board as possible. But the ship is still sinking. Spain is (i would add arguably, but I believe it's beyond argument) now the most understaffed, undertrained, under-rested and overworked airspace in Europe. It beholds more delays and near misses than anywhere else. I dare not say any more, lest I be accused of scaremongering…

Phone hacking

I know this post is long overdue. Have you heard about the phone hacking scandal in UK? It's made a one hundred and sixty eight year old paper disappear, a police chief resign, quite a few Press bosses dump their careers, and it's even shaken the ground Prime Minister Cameron treads upon.
Phone hacking happened to Spanish air traffic controllers last year. My own phone used to receive calls from non existing numbers. The battery suddenly heated up unexpectedly (meaning the phone was being used as a remote microphone). All of this happened before phone tapping was finally authorised by a Judge.
The person responsible for this is now the PSOE candidate for the next General Election in Spain, due for 20th November.

Forty seven near misses.

The Performance Review report for 2010 has just been published. It highlights one main point regarding safety, but first let me tell you, to my knowledge, how the reports are done. If you are really interested you can check the Eurocontrol PRR 2010, available on the internet. I am obviously only going to disclose the important data from my (admittedly biased) position.
That said, the data Eurocontrol publishes has previously been forwarded by the Air Navigation Service Providers, they usually follow Eurocontrol criteria for category classification, and they are also usually backed by the expertise of the national safety supervising authority (in Spain, AESA, Agencia Española de Seguridad Aérea). There are occasional discrepancies from the general rule, but basically the data is perfectly comparable.
Regarding the classification criteria, suffice it to say that, to avoid being too technical, they are class A (near collision), class B (Safety not guaranteed), and others. Either of the two former are very serious incidents. Of course, where humans operate the system, mistakes are prone to occur. So I’ll just give you the data for class A incidents for countries comparable to Spain and let you arrive at your own conclusions.
France ---14
Germany --- 4
UK (Nats) --- 0
SPAIN --- 47
I was going to leave it there, but Aena adds a line saying that none of the Spanish near collisions was due to ATM (Air Traffic Management). Yes, I also wondered at first whether pilots had just gone berserk and had decided to ram into each other. Obviously, our magnificent management staff had just decided that having Spanish controllers work half as much more than British or German controllers, or calling them for duty on their day off (compulsory attendance, remember), or cancelling their holidays once their plane tickets and hotels were booked, or leaving them for years on end without touching a simulator, or allowing one day’s rest out of each six; or endorsing their English level, not because they had had enough training but because they have never been entangled in a language related incident before, had nothing to do with their professional capacity.
Fortunately, we know the figures and we are doing our best to improve safety, but it isn’t easy. I’ll write about that soon.

Traffic Regulations

I am aware that most of my readers are aviation specialists, but some are not. Therefore I apologise for some layman explanations I sometimes prefer to make.
Air traffic control basically is no more than the surveillance of traffic flow to ensure that safety is always guaranteed along the flight path. National airspaces are covered by different companies (ANSPs), usually just one per country. Then they are divided into different regions (FIR, Flight Information Regions). Each one of these is usually managed from one workplace (Control Centre), which, in turn, is subdivided into different sectors, each one managed by one team of controllers, comprising from one to three ATCOs. Sometimes (in low traffic periods, such as night-times) these sectors are merged, forming a new sector, with a different name.
Each sector (or resulting sector) has a declared maximum overall capacity, which has theoretically been determined through workload studies, considering optimum conditions. When being licensed, controllers train in a simulator that reproduces the normal traffic flow. The trainees commence with a low traffic exercise and increase their skill by increasing traffic until the maximum capacity (or even further in simulators) and then contingencies are introduced). These could be anything from a radio failure to aircraft in an emergency, bad weather, ash clouds, malfunctioning equipment such as radar or radio beacons, etc. It could also be industrial action or, even fatigued ATCOs.
Controllers are not endorsed until they prove they can manage any situation that could crop up. As you may have guessed, many of these contingencies would reduce the maximum capacity of any given sector where real traffic is concerned.
That’s where regulations enter the picture. Obviously a traffic in emergency (as the name suggest) appears suddenly, and controllers have to improvise. If proper training has been undertaken, improvisation will be kept to a minimum.
But poor weather can usually be forecast, and therefore measures can be taken to reduce sector capacity. These will involve delaying take-off times or modifying flight plan levels or even routes. These are the so called regulations. They can also apply in conjuction with other circumstances (on the job training, illness, equipment failure…)
The local Flow management unit works closely together with Eurocontrol Central Flow Management Unit. Sophisticated computers calculate how each glitch in different airspaces affects any given flight, and calculates, with amazing precision, how much traffic will affect certain sector at a given time.
Where I work, in Madrid, the local flow management unit is situated in a corner of the operations room, and supervisors and the head can easily access the data (workload patterns) that flow management officers have at their disposal. But that is about to be a thing of the past.
Te flow unit is going to be removed from the operations room, to complicate matters for supervisors and controllers, to make it harder to regulate when the weather gets tough, to avoid controllers being aware of their impending workload. Once again, Efficiency before Safety.
Sadly, even considering that Spain has a pretty poor aviation safety record, the authorities can afford loss of lives, but not of money. Even so, they’re mucking it all up, as I will show in my next post.

Ryanair to leave Spain

That's what they claim. Unless they're relieved from paying fines and compensation for not complying with Spanish regulations. As with most Ryanair announcements, I don't believe a word. We'll see...

Thanks for reading.

The glorious land of golden opportunities

So you're thinking about coming to Spain to become an Air Traffic Controller? Maybe you're thinking about imparting some lessons at Senasa or the Universidad Camilo José Cela, where Air Traffic Controller lessons are available.
Be aware of what awaits you. If you work as an ATCO here, your wages or working hours, or retirement age are in the hands of the government. Literally. We used to negotiate our conditions, but a Royal Decree (contrary to the Spanish Constitution) came in giving all the power to Aena's management team. Our new bargaining "agreement" which has been imposed, is available on internet, albeit in Spanish: check it HERE
It's a well known fact that Mr Lema Devesa, Aena's Director General President, is a personal friend to Mr José Blanco, the Development Minister who signed all the new regulations that stripped us of our basic rights. So there's no logical reason to think that this wouldn't happen to you.
If you decide to work with an Air Traffic Control Academy, you might find that it isn't even certified. Therefore, there may be legal prosecution from alumni -as I understand is the case- claiming not only the return of their fees, but also compensation for misleading ads or brochures.
By the way, at this point you may wish to check the fees HERE
A colleague's daughter has decided that training in Spain is basically rubbish, and she has gone to Skyguide in Switzerland, where she does a proper 15 month course (instead of our useless 22 weeks!) and earns a decent wage instead of having to dish out fifty grand without any guarantee of work at the end.
You might be inclined to thinking that all I say is basically crap in order to defend our "privileged" position, as has been portrayed in the media, and that you could always refer to the Spanish Judiciary to solve any dispute and introduce Justice. Just check what has happened to British buyers of Spanish property, as reported in The Daily Telegraph. I hope seeing is believing: Here's the report
This sort of action by the incompetent Spanish Government is what led Spanish controllers to the anger which led to the events of the past 3rd and 4th of December, when the Spanish Government, through Aena, closed Spanish airspace to create even greater rage against Spanish ATCO's. Why?
More about that in a future post

Imaginative rostering

Well informed sources tell me that in a few units, including Valencia and Palma, new working schedules are to be introduced. Basically, they'll be six consecutive working days, ending with a night shift. After the sleeping day, there'll be just one day off, and then back to the next six.
Of course, under the new regulations, we have no say. So if you fly to the east of Spain this summer, be considerate to your pilots if they suddenly give the plane a beating in order to avoid disaster amongst knackered controllers.