Keep our skies safe
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Pilots internationally acclaim Britain’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS) as the best in the world. We must keep it that way.

But the government’s plans to privatise NATS are opposed by the airline pilots, air traffic controllers, support staff and by the light aviation community. And the House of Commons Transport Select Committee called the proposals the ‘worst of all the possible options’. It is no accident that even the Tories did not privatise air traffic services. No other country has — except Fiji.

Privatising air traffic control is not like privatising an airline. An airline can increase its profits by improving the frequency of services, the number of destinations and so on. But all NATS does is keep planes safely apart. So all NATS could do to boost profits would be to cut costs. And this leads to real safety concerns.

In preparing for privatisation, the Civil Aviation Authority has proposed major cuts in NATS’ prices. NATS’ worries were leaked this summer. NATS said this would ‘impose major operational difficulties on the business. NATS is not a standard utility — safety in the ATC industry is undoubtedly of a different order of importance. One simple distinction is that staffing levels are absolutely critical to ATC safety and service delivery, whereas that is not nearly so true in other utilities’.

NATS privatisation also raises concerns for our national security.

Firstly, military and civilian cooperation is vital. Britain is a terrific example of this cooperation working well. But if a private strategic partner is running NATS, the RAF could be squeezed out over time.

Secondly, in an incident like a hijack it would be crucial that our police, military and air traffic controllers worked together seamlessly. If they were all working in the public sector they would be expected to show more sustained and more effective cooperation than if our air traffic control was handled by an outside, private company.

Finally, in a crisis, the government needs to be able to take complete control of airspace. But if an overseas company owns NATS’ strategic partner, a conflict of interest may arise and the government may not get the maximum cooperation which it needs.

The privatisation of air traffic control was not put forward to improve the safety of our skies, but for financial reasons — first to raise money for the treasury, which we now know will be less than expected, and secondly because the treasury would not let NATS borrow from the private sector.

This is shortsighted. NATS is a profit making company. It would be perfectly prudent to let NATS borrow to invest, just as Labour has so rightly allowed the Post Office and Manchester Airport. A number of other countries have taken this ‘corporatised’ route. The not-for-profit trust model, as adopted by Canada, is an alternative option.

There will never be a good time to privatise NATS. But there could not be a worse time than now. There is a massive investment programme underway, building new centres at Swanwick and Prestwick. NATS’ management should be focused on completing this crucial work, not on privatisation.

NATS privatisation will be deeply unpopular. In NOP’s recent poll, 76 per cent of those asked were opposed to a sale of air traffic control — only 14 per cent approved.

And there is a danger that this problem will not fade away once privatisation is complete. In the event of a serious incident, it may prove impossible to disentangle privatisation — even if it is totally irrelevant — from the safety question in the minds of commentators and public alike.

It would be the Labour Party that suffered the consequences then.