I second everything Scuzi has already said. I'm not long out of the college and half way through live training. I started this at the age of 31 with a wife and 3 kids. Almost a year on and I can't imagine doing anything else, although It was hard living away from my family for almost a year.
air traffic controllers
- Thread starter mjt
- Start date
I applied ot Nats whislt I was in the middle of My A Levels. I skipped two A level exams in order to attend the interviews for my job. It was a massive risk but I was confident I would make it.cheers Scuzi, that's pretty much exactly what i was looking for
for some reason i thought you were older, did you join straight from school?
no one happens to have any experience of EUROCONTROL do they?
Primarily I use the Debden radar head (based just north of Stansted) but if it cocks up it's either the Pease Pottage head just south of Gatwick or the Heathrow 23cm. If things go really **** up then we have the Heathrow 10cm and the Stansted 10Cm but their range is severly limited and I can only think of one situation whre I have had to rely on them.
In absolute emergency situation we can use the Claxby, Clee Hill or Cromer radar heads but that's a one in a million chance.
Soldato
- Joined
- 28 Nov 2008
- Posts
- 8,725
- Location
- UK
Scuzi, is your £60k+ annual salary pro-rata (including or excluding your ridiculous amount of holiday)?
You're so damn lucky! Surely there must be some stinking downsides to the job (despite the stress and responsibility)?
You're so damn lucky! Surely there must be some stinking downsides to the job (despite the stress and responsibility)?
Apparently it costs the company between £600k and £1 million. I don't know for sure as I was paid a salary whilst being trained of something in the region of £22k. It's down to about £12k now but it's better than having to pay for it by yourself which is the way it appears to be headed
That sucks though as the amount of quality trainees coming through the system seems to have dwindled. I'll be going for my instructors rating soon and to be honest I'm quite worried that the dwindling terms and conditions are producing less suitable people for the job. I don't want to be training incompetent people on my licence.
It's a solid salary guaranteed regardless of how many hours I work. It goes up between £3-5k every year too which is pretty cool. I do consider myself VERY lucky and try to remain hunble about my situation given that most of my friends are only finishing university with £20k+ of debt and no job.
Downsides to the job are pretty much shift work and stress. Stress rarely plays a part because as I said befoire you are trained for the worst of situations and should be able to handle it but there are some days when it really gets to you and there's **** all you can do about it apart from go to the pub and drink it off (something I seem to be doing almost every day now
)Without wanting to sound like I'm boasting, I really love my job and I'm sure the other controllers here (Ben Cole etc...) will share that sentiment. It gives great job satisfaction with the pay and benefits to support it. If I wasn't doing ATC, I'd be earning less than a third of what I am now in IT.
I seem to work at my best in highly stressfull situations and I knew becoming an ATC would be my dream job. It's something I have always wanted to be since I was about 10 or 11 and I was dead set on becoming one with the backing of my parents. Then one day I became a diabetic and the dream was over. When they find a cure I will apply to become an ATC straight away regardless of where I am or what job I have...
Have you thought of becoming a FISO or something similar in the meantime. AFAIK a Flight Information Services Officer only requrires a CAA Class 3 medical which should accommodate your illness. I know it's not quite the same but it should quench your thirst for the job so to speak!
Is it just the people who direct air traffic that get paid the big £££ and have all the benifits? I'm just wondering if they offer the engineers and IT guys a decent pay too, since after all if something goes wrong it would be a bit more complex then just 'turninging it off and on again'. I did a search on google and found a site of ATCs in the UK, and some of their other jobs are quite interesting, i had no idea they had research and development section, or some of the graduate schemes/schemes to give a taster of the different areas as well as training.
I dunno about other companies but in Nats the engineers are on big bucks, many of them on more than controllers - and for good reason too. Some of them are absolute genuises without whom we'd not be able to do our job. I have no idea about the R&D department.
I had a read on the natscareers website, and as much as I would love a career change it just seems too much of a risk.
My thinking goes along the lines of:
1: Both the missus and I leave our jobs in south London (if I get accepted to the college)
2: Move to Bournemouth and start from scratch, wife find job, find accomodation.
3: At any point during my training I may fail and thats it, game over.
4: If I pass training I could be sent anywhere i.e. Scotland bbbrrrrr
Before that though, I just don't meet the BMI requirement and South African qualifications do not follow the GCSE route so may be hard to compare what high school qualifications I have (5 GCSE's means nothing to me lol - I had a B+ for standard grade maths and a C for english as a first language which a fellow South African would recognise)
Still I have it hanging in the back of my mind - 10 years down the line I may just think 'heck I should have attempted it while I had a chance, what if?'
My thinking goes along the lines of:
1: Both the missus and I leave our jobs in south London (if I get accepted to the college)
2: Move to Bournemouth and start from scratch, wife find job, find accomodation.
3: At any point during my training I may fail and thats it, game over.
4: If I pass training I could be sent anywhere i.e. Scotland bbbrrrrr
Before that though, I just don't meet the BMI requirement
and South African qualifications do not follow the GCSE route so may be hard to compare what high school qualifications I have (5 GCSE's means nothing to me lol - I had a B+ for standard grade maths and a C for english as a first language which a fellow South African would recognise)Still I have it hanging in the back of my mind - 10 years down the line I may just think 'heck I should have attempted it while I had a chance, what if?'
I left my wife and children in Edinburgh whilst I went down to Bournemouth. Not ideal but we decided it was for the best, I could visit every couple of weeks, it would give me peace to study and if I failed then I just moved back home.
When I did pass I pleaded like mad for an Edinburgh posting and instead got sent to Aberdeen. Me and the wife were a ****ed off but hey when I first applied I was expecting to end up in Swanwick anyways. We've been up in Aberdeenshire for a few months now and love it, family come up to visit every few weeks and the kids have settled well.
If I were you I would go for it. It took me 2 attempts to get in and I'm glad I went back for the second shot.
(Oh, and my BMI is 33
)
When I did pass I pleaded like mad for an Edinburgh posting and instead got sent to Aberdeen. Me and the wife were a ****ed off but hey when I first applied I was expecting to end up in Swanwick anyways. We've been up in Aberdeenshire for a few months now and love it, family come up to visit every few weeks and the kids have settled well.
If I were you I would go for it. It took me 2 attempts to get in and I'm glad I went back for the second shot.
(Oh, and my BMI is 33
)