I worked in ATC for National Air Traffic Services (UK) for 10 years and when
I left, there were plans afoot from the Mr Blair's "About Face" party to
privatise NATS. It was cynically announced on the last day of parliament for
the year so to play down the media furore and union backlash.
I can assure you that controllers are not obsessed with whether we have
minorities or women increasing in the roles, we dont care as long as they
can do the job. But ultimately, privatisation comes hand in hand with demand
for profits, and that means corner cutting and increased workloads on
controllers.

Incidentally, the UK Govt then, after I left, 49% privatised NATS to airline
ownership, and from what I hear, morale has never been lower.

Profit might encourage competition and then enhance efficiencies in other
industries but it doesnt in air traffic control. In telecom industries,
smaller operators can set up easily, but in ATC, its a huge infrastructure
requiring expensive hardware setup costs, and so, there's usually no shift
from the status quo in competition: once the ATC system is privatised, you
still get a large (now privately owned company) running the show - the only
difference is that there isa huge power shift to that company's management
structure who will squeeze every ounce out of their workforce.

As an added, noted the posting about training other people to do your job.
One year, our general manager at London Heathrow advised us that in order to
secure the contract for ATC for the next 5 years, a clause would be added
that if BAA were to offer the next ATC contract to a private company, we
would be willing to train up their controllers for the 9 or so months it
takes until they were ok on their own.
You could hear the laughter in the terminals.


"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
online.com...
Matthew S. Whiting wrote:

And the profit motive. The latter can exist without competition. The
edge is certainly much sharper with competition as now it is that much
harder to make a profit, but making an even larger profit is still
pretty strong motivation.

I question this reasoning only because regulated markets haven't been
shown
as all that efficient, and it's tough to imagine that private ATC would be
unregulated.

In theory, the "right" regulation would promote efficiency. But what's
"right" might not even be known. More, were it known, it still might be
politically "expensive", and therefore forgotten.

However, we should all be aware that there is one bit of "low hanging
fruit"
for a private ATC venture from an efficiency perspective: kill smaller GA.
If the "benefit" factor in the efficiency ratio is anything like
"people-miles moved", getting smaller GA out of the ATC system would
improve the benefit/cost ratio.

- Andrew