National Air Traffic Control Services NATS

[Aviador]

[textarea]Manchester air traffic control staff to move north

Manchester Airport's 35-year-old air traffic control centre is to close in 2010, with 180 staff moving to Scotland. The move by NATS, formerly National Air Traffic Services, will see a new £170m centre in Prestwick, Ayrshire, controlling the general airspace. Staff at Manchester Airport's control tower, who monitor take-offs and landings, remain unaffected.

The air traffic control centre employs 220 staff and 180 have opted for the move north. Others have accepted redundancy or retirement. Once the move is completed, NATS centre in Prestwick and its equivalent in Swanwick, Hampshire, will control all UK airspace. David Harrison, who manages air traffic in Manchester, said the switch would improve the safety of air traffic in the UK.

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Is the NATS centre located at Prestwick airport itself or is it off site? Also, does this involve building a new facility?

 

[red dug]

[textarea]Manchester air traffic control staff to move north

Manchester Airport's 35-year-old air traffic control centre is to close in 2010, with 180 staff moving to Scotland. The move by NATS, formerly National Air Traffic Services, will see a new £170m centre in Prestwick, Ayrshire, controlling the general airspace. Staff at Manchester Airport's control tower, who monitor take-offs and landings, remain unaffected.

The air traffic control centre employs 220 staff and 180 have opted for the move north. Others have accepted redundancy or retirement. Once the move is completed, NATS centre in Prestwick and its equivalent in Swanwick, Hampshire, will control all UK airspace. David Harrison, who manages air traffic in Manchester, said the switch would improve the safety of air traffic in the UK.

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Is the NATS centre located at Prestwick airport itself or is it off site? Also, does this involve building a new facility?

They built a nice new building next door to the old centre its a couple of miles away from the airport almost in my back garden actually

 

[Aviador]

Thanks for letting me know Red Dug. Happy Christmas by the way. :smile:

 

[Aviador]

[textarea]New Scots air traffic centre set to take off

The operational floor of the new air traffic control centre in Prestwick, which will be officially opened next month

A massive operation to transfer air traffic control from Manchester to a new £180m centre near Prestwick Airport, involving more than 130 England-based staff relocating to Scotland, was completed over the weekend.

The final stage of transferring operations to the new air traffic control centre, which is responsible for one of the largest air spaces in Europe, was completed between 7pm on Friday and 4am on Saturday.

Air traffic controllers were forced to move home in a matter of days in order to finish a shift in Manchester and start their next at Prestwick, near Glasgow, as only one centre can be in operation at any one time for safety reasons.

The new centre has been built by the semi-privatised air traffic control company, Nats, as part of a move to consolidate operations at two locations. The Swanwick Centre in Hampshire oversees aircraft flying in and out of the congested skies in the south of England. It will control 42% of the 2.2 million flights in the UK’s controlled airspace.

The move brings to an end 35 years of air traffic control from the centre in Manchester.

Staff at Manchester handled the final aircraft from the old operations room in the early hours of Saturday morning before handing over executive control to their colleagues in Ayrshire. The centre will be officially opened on February 5 in a ceremony attended by the Princess Royal.

Brian Donohoe, MP for Central Ayrshire, welcomed the completion of the project. He said: “Having been deeply involved over a great number of years with this project, it is fantastic to see the end product in place and up and running.

“Nats deserve to be congratulated in having the transfer done so smoothly and I look forward to seeing the operation being officially opened on the February. 5”

Nats Chief Executive Paul Barron added: “Many people have worked very hard over the course of this project to ensure everything is delivered on time, under budget and with minimum disruption to the service we provide to the airlines.

“We have set great store by a transition of this site, which we brought in without affecting our 24-hour, 365-day operation on which the UK depends.”

The transition is the culmination of a 10-year strategy to manage the UK’s controlled airspace from two centres instead of four.

Prestwick and Swanwick are now in charge of the UK’s controlled airspace after the closure of the Manchester centre and, three years ago, the centre at West Drayton near Heathrow.


How Prestwick heard Flight 103’s last words

Among the flights handled by Prestwick was Pan Am flight 103. The Lockerbie bombing trial 10 years ago heard how the doomed flight went off the radar at Prestwick.

The trial in the Netherlands of Libyans Abdelbaset Ali al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah was told the jet moved north toward Scotland on December 21, 1988. It approached the Scottish Border at 6.56pm, before it was picked up by the Scottish Area Control Centre at Prestwick .

Air traffic controller Alan Topp made contact with the plane and heard Pan Am captain James MacQuarrie say the last words from flight 103 to the ground: “Clipper 103 requesting oceanic clearance.”

Mr Topp watched as flight 103 approached the Solway Firth and, at 7.02pm, crossed into Dumfries and Galloway.

Mr Topp thought the flight had passed into a “zone of silence” – where objects are invisible to radar. He tried to contact Captain MacQuarrie and asked a nearby KLM flight to do the same, but there was no response.

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[News Guru]

[textarea]UK air traffic controllers say system ‘not safe’

Technology being introduced at one of the two major UK air traffic control centres is ‘not fit for purpose’ and did not adequately handle a breakdown in air traffic communications, ZDNET.co.uk reports a number of air traffic controllers have said. The EFD (Electronic Flight Data) system rolled out at the Scottish and Oceanic Air Traffic Control (ATC) Centre at Prestwick Airport has had difficulty handling complex inputs, according to those posting on an air traffic control forum.

One Prestwick controller, Arty-Ziff, said on an internet chatroom: ‘[Controllers] don't want to use this system, not because they like to have a whinge, but because they know it is neither safe, nor efficient enough to do the job. This system should have been tested properly before it went into live operations.’

Another, maintainhighspeed, said: ‘EFD is used in Nigeria, Israel and various towers. This system has experienced nothing as complex as the Prestwick Control Centre. It is struggling. I strongly feel that EFD is not capable of handling an Oceanic interface, ATSOCAS [Air Traffic Services Outside Controlled Airspace], procedural control, airways, single-man and double-man operation all in one.'

EFD uses electronic flight data strips called smartStrips to log aircraft locations and commands, rather than the paper strips long used in ATC. The technology used at Prestwick is being implemented by the National Air Traffic Service (NATS).

The EFD system is being phased in at Prestwick on a rolling basis. It is currently being used by controllers looking after West 2 LAG, the sector that covers Manchester in a 100-mile radius around the airport runway. The phasing-in began on January 28, but has suffered problems, including latency and screens not working, according to forum posts.

‘My worry is that for a busy session, EFD will not be as quick or as robust as paper strips,’ wrote Pprune member anotherthing, who noted concerns that controllers might miss conflicts with electronic strips.

However, Theodor Zeh, director of human factors for Austria-based Frequentis, the provider of the technology, said the EFD system is capable of handling real-time air traffic at Prestwick. He told ZDNET: ‘The system can handle fast inputs.' He said that problems had been ironed out in live testing, which began at the end of January, adding: ‘The last big change to air traffic management was the introduction of radar 50 years ago. When change comes, it can be extremely painful and difficult. Any change will decrease the performance of a system by a certain amount of time.'

He said that the problems lie in air traffic controllers feeling comfortable with the interface. ‘This is about how to implement functionality so controllers are fully confident, not [about] the capacity of the system. We fully understand where this comes from — air traffic controllers are really working in an extremely difficult environment — but change needs to be brought in.’

A spokesman for NATS said: ‘We don't comment on internet chat room rumours.'

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[Aviador]

You have to wonder if there's possibly some truth in the 'rumours' given the recent problems over the last few weeks when traffic across the North of the UK as far South as Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool suffered severe delays because of problems at the NATS Prestwick centre. 'If' there are issues with the new systems in place there, they really need to get them sorted before the summer when air traffic will increase dramatically.