Skies above Britain - bbc 2
Discussion
Here are the details: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/23/in...
I thought this weeks was the best one yet. Bit more variety in it.
I thought this weeks was the best one yet. Bit more variety in it.
Thankyou4calling said:
8, as you say is an exception. I live in West London, pretty much the Heathrow flight path and generally you can see none, the other times one, maybe two.
The skies are not crowded, that's a fact.
You can't be looking very hard that's all I can say! There's nearly always 4 or 5 spaced out across London looking east on final approach into LHR. The skies are not crowded, that's a fact.
Surprised how much the Captain was giving the yoke in the Norwegian jet when he was hand flying the approach. Must have been more turbulent than it looked.
The female activist is an idiot as is this humming clown.
The speaker in the bin. FFS.
Amazed the controller disclosed his salary on TV. Ballpark figure but will get some people excited all the same.
The female activist is an idiot as is this humming clown.
The speaker in the bin. FFS.
Amazed the controller disclosed his salary on TV. Ballpark figure but will get some people excited all the same.
Edited by KTF on Wednesday 14th September 20:40
KTF said:
Surprised how much the Captain was giving the yoke in the Norwegian jet when he was hand flying the approach. Must have been more turbulent than it looked.
The female activist is an idiot as is this humming clown.
The speaker in the bin. FFS.
Amazed the controller disclosed his salary on TV. Ballpark figure but will get some people excited all the same.
I'm amazed he was not creating an unstable plane. He hardly seemed to be considering how his input was affecting the plane. Gonna be asking people on the know about this!The female activist is an idiot as is this humming clown.
The speaker in the bin. FFS.
Amazed the controller disclosed his salary on TV. Ballpark figure but will get some people excited all the same.
Edited by KTF on Wednesday 14th September 20:40
This is the fear of flying course she flew (ironic) to attend. No mention of the prices but I imagine it wasn't cheap: http://www.phobiaman.co.uk/overcoming-fear-of-flyi...
surveyor said:
I'm amazed he was not creating an unstable plane. He hardly seemed to be considering how his input was affecting the plane. Gonna be asking people on the know about this!
I believe on an airbus you can give it some on the stick but the aircraft will limit the movement if it feels it's too much. I think they said they were on a 737NG but not sure if that has something similar?KTF said:
surveyor said:
I'm amazed he was not creating an unstable plane. He hardly seemed to be considering how his input was affecting the plane. Gonna be asking people on the know about this!
I believe on an airbus you can give it some on the stick but the aircraft will limit the movement if it feels it's too much. I think they said they were on a 737NG but not sure if that has something similar?KTF said:
Amazed the controller disclosed his salary on TV. Ballpark figure but will get some people excited all the same.
Course 241 starting, that made me feel old! Only 4 of them as well, 29 started on my course.Edited by KTF on Wednesday 14th September 20:40
God I remember opening those envelopes like it was yesterday. f
king horrible walking out of the room while some of your mates stayed behind.It's intended to get people excited, we need controllers, there's a global shortage and with other countries (mostly ME) actively poaching we need people to apply. It's a very rigorous selection process as stated in the programme and the training is very tough but it's an enormously rewarding job both financially and in terms of job satisfaction. I would encourage anyone who thinks it might interest them to have a look on the NATS website and if still interested apply.
Plane stupid appeared to be a rather apt name for that organisation. Why would someone be proud of disrupting 5000 peoples travel plans? Selfish woman.
I know of one person who got all the way to the penultimate stage of training but didn't make it. They work in CTC now instead.
I have been on a tour of nats and it's an interesting place as I know someone on the engineering side. I was not knocking the salary as it's justified given the training involved, day to day responsibility, etc.
As this is PH, there is always some interesting metal in the car park
I have been on a tour of nats and it's an interesting place as I know someone on the engineering side. I was not knocking the salary as it's justified given the training involved, day to day responsibility, etc.
As this is PH, there is always some interesting metal in the car park
KTF said:
I know of one person who got all the way to the penultimate stage of training but didn't make it. They work in CTC now instead.
I have been on a tour of nats and it's an interesting place as I know someone on the engineering side. I was not knocking the salary as it's justified given the training involved, day to day responsibility, etc.
As this is PH, there is always some interesting metal in the car park
I wasn't accusing you of that if my post came across that way I apologise.I have been on a tour of nats and it's an interesting place as I know someone on the engineering side. I was not knocking the salary as it's justified given the training involved, day to day responsibility, etc.
As this is PH, there is always some interesting metal in the car park
CTC- aka the Death Star. It's quite common for trainees who haven't made it to work in the company elsewhere. It's certainly a smarter policy than that of old since a lot of these people have a fantastic understanding of the intricacies of air traffic and are invaluable for things like airspace design, system design and safety. If we left those things to people who haven't any practical experience God only knows what we'd end up with!
Indeed there's some nice metal. Aside from all the usual German suspects I've noticed a newish V8 vantage and a beautiful 60's mustang in a ruby red colour. One of the ladies I work with has an E type 3.8, she used to bring it to work but since they've got up to silly money it stats safely tucked away in her garage.
djc206 said:
Course 241 starting, that made me feel old! Only 4 of them as well, 29 started on my course.
God I remember opening those envelopes like it was yesterday. fking horrible walking out of the room while some of your mates stayed behind.
It's intended to get people excited, we need controllers, there's a global shortage and with other countries (mostly ME) actively poaching we need people to apply. It's a very rigorous selection process as stated in the programme and the training is very tough but it's an enormously rewarding job both financially and in terms of job satisfaction. I would encourage anyone who thinks it might interest them to have a look on the NATS website and if still interested apply.
Plane stupid appeared to be a rather apt name for that organisation. Why would someone be proud of disrupting 5000 peoples travel plans? Selfish woman.
Are you saying you failed atc with nats and then went to another company outside the uk? Confused, have a few other questions I can reply with later God I remember opening those envelopes like it was yesterday. f
king horrible walking out of the room while some of your mates stayed behind.It's intended to get people excited, we need controllers, there's a global shortage and with other countries (mostly ME) actively poaching we need people to apply. It's a very rigorous selection process as stated in the programme and the training is very tough but it's an enormously rewarding job both financially and in terms of job satisfaction. I would encourage anyone who thinks it might interest them to have a look on the NATS website and if still interested apply.
Plane stupid appeared to be a rather apt name for that organisation. Why would someone be proud of disrupting 5000 peoples travel plans? Selfish woman.
andrewh said:
Are you saying you failed atc with nats and then went to another company outside the uk? Confused, have a few other questions I can reply with later
No I passed thankfully and still work for NATS. The people who pass have to leave the room, and make a beeline for the pub! A fair few have gone elsewhere that's one of the reasons (along with increasing traffic levels) that we need people to apply.I didn't think the failure rate was as high as 50% (according to the nats person on his course) more like 25% but I guess it varies from course to course.
1. We're the people who were suspended then dismissed the same guys that failed the initial assesment first time.
2. How did the guy go from 72% iirc to 99.5 at the second attempt, is it a case of working himself silly or is there plenty of extra 1-1 tuition at this point.
3. Is a class size of 6 the norm, would in your personal (hypothetical?) opinion a class size of say 12 or 16 make things more difficult for each inidividual trainee.
4. How far into the course were they at the verbal assesment I'm guessing week 4? Is that one attempt or two.
5. Is the course residential or do trainees have to organise there own accommodation. Could it be argued that if not and trainees had to commute a round trip or 2-3 hours a day make things harder?
1. We're the people who were suspended then dismissed the same guys that failed the initial assesment first time.
2. How did the guy go from 72% iirc to 99.5 at the second attempt, is it a case of working himself silly or is there plenty of extra 1-1 tuition at this point.
3. Is a class size of 6 the norm, would in your personal (hypothetical?) opinion a class size of say 12 or 16 make things more difficult for each inidividual trainee.
4. How far into the course were they at the verbal assesment I'm guessing week 4? Is that one attempt or two.
5. Is the course residential or do trainees have to organise there own accommodation. Could it be argued that if not and trainees had to commute a round trip or 2-3 hours a day make things harder?
andrewh said:
I didn't think the failure rate was as high as 50% (according to the nats person on his course) more like 25% but I guess it varies from course to course.
1. We're the people who were suspended then dismissed the same guys that failed the initial assesment first time.
2. How did the guy go from 72% iirc to 99.5 at the second attempt, is it a case of working himself silly or is there plenty of extra 1-1 tuition at this point.
3. Is a class size of 6 the norm, would in your personal (hypothetical?) opinion a class size of say 12 or 16 make things more difficult for each inidividual trainee.
4. How far into the course were they at the verbal assesment I'm guessing week 4? Is that one attempt or two.
5. Is the course residential or do trainees have to organise there own accommodation. Could it be argued that if not and trainees had to commute a round trip or 2-3 hours a day make things harder?
To start with I'll say aerodrome and area are different. Aerodrome has a higher success rate because there's less to learn and fewer chances to fail. But with the exception of Heathrow it doesn't pay as well. To me it doesn't seem as challenging, a lot of the traffic can hold position, nothing I work can.1. We're the people who were suspended then dismissed the same guys that failed the initial assesment first time.
2. How did the guy go from 72% iirc to 99.5 at the second attempt, is it a case of working himself silly or is there plenty of extra 1-1 tuition at this point.
3. Is a class size of 6 the norm, would in your personal (hypothetical?) opinion a class size of say 12 or 16 make things more difficult for each inidividual trainee.
4. How far into the course were they at the verbal assesment I'm guessing week 4? Is that one attempt or two.
5. Is the course residential or do trainees have to organise there own accommodation. Could it be argued that if not and trainees had to commute a round trip or 2-3 hours a day make things harder?
There is enormous variation from course to course, if you're all s
t you'll all fail, if you're all st hot you'll all pass. The costs of training are so high they don't fail people to play a numbers game. I was told recently that it costs roughly £500k to train someone to validation in area.1) yes
Of my course of 29 in area 5 made it through the 3 courses without recoursing. Most people will resit at least one course. Generally as a rule failing any of the theory tests and then failing a resit will see you out the door as tbh there's really no excuse, fail the practical exams and you stand a good chance of resitting that course.
2) he didn't work hard enough the first time, you know what you need to learn and when you need to learn it by. There's no 1 to 1, you are expected to learn on your own. There's no nursing people through.
3) no. Aerodrome courses typically run about 10, area around 20-30. When they were filming this course sizes were small as they didn't think we'd need many staff, course sizes have increased recently to meet demand. I would say bigger courses are better, I learned a lot from my friends and they from me, if there had been fewer of us we might not have challenged each other's incorrect assertions.
4) I think oral boards are conducted quite late in a course so maybe 2-3 months in. Usually 2 attempts unless your performance to date has been poor, it's the most commonly failed of the tests because it's the highest pressure and easiest to fail, you only need get a couple questions that throw you and you're screwed. We found group study (read beer fuelled group arguments) were the best way to study for this element.
5) non residential, you are expected to organise your own accommodation and no such argument would be tolerated. Most people house share, there were 10 of us in our house! You sign a mobile grade contract. You could find yourself posted to Belfast, Aberdeen, Southampton etc etc moving is part of the deal. This is where area appeals even more as there's only two available postings: Swanwick (Hants) and Prestwick (Ayrshire), at a guess 2/3 of controllers get posted to Swanwick. A couple of positives for Prestwick are the incredibly high validation (qualification) rate and the fact that property is ridiculously cheap.
Any other questions fire away.
Edited by djc206 on Wednesday 14th September 23:15
Edited by djc206 on Wednesday 14th September 23:17
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