NUMBER OF VALIDATIONS

How many validations in total were held by air traffic controllers at Swanwick in each month since the start of operations in January 2002?

The method of calculating the total number of validations was changed in July 2002 and, in consequence, there is not a single data series going back to January of that year. The methodology was revised to provide greater accuracy in that it now excludes validated staff who are not available for rostering-for example because they are on maternity leave.

THE DATA SERIES IS AS FOLLOWS:

Where a controller has both a tactical and a planner validation on a single sector it is counted as a single validation

The number of validations is different from the number of staff in post because controllers may be valid on more than one sector. The reason for the decline in validations is that a number of controllers holding multiple validations have retired in this period and these staff have been replaced by new controllers holding single validations. For example, the percentage of controllers holding three skills has reduced over the period from 27.3% to 20.9%.

As explained in my earlier letter, a major re-organisation of the airspace will be introduced shortly which, in addition to increasing the capacity of the system overall, will have the effect of reducing manpower requirements at Swanwick in the short term. As previously explained, there is anticipated to be a shortfall of 12 controllers on the requirement for the summer peak period.