- Britain's air traffic control system
has been close to breaking point six times in less than a month, according
to a safety report seen by The Observer.
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- Air traffic controllers officially reported
six cases of "overload" - when they were handling so many aircraft
that there was no margin for error - involving aircraft using Heathrow,
Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports during 23 days up to 21 May. In the
whole of last year there were only 12 such cases.
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- The figures emerged as the Government
declared it planned a partial privatisation of the National Air Traffic
Services (Nats), the state body that provides UK air traffic control cover.
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- On one day, 11 May, not only was the
London area overloaded with flights in the early morning, but a jet was
cleared to land at Gatwick while one was already on the runway preparing
to take off. An accident was averted when the controller realised what
was happening, according to the latest flight safety report from the Civil
Aviation Authority, which owns Nats.
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- It shows that the system was allegedly
overloaded on five days between 5 and 21 May and had been allegedly "seriously
overloaded" for two and a half hours on the morning of 28 April.
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- Each case is officially regarded as an
"alleged" overload until it has been investigated, a process
which can take several months.
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- A CAA spokeswoman said: "There have
been a few more overload reports of late because of increases in the traffic."
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- Controllers are worried that the ageing
computer system and increasingly stressed workforce are stretched to the
limit, and that a mid-air collision can only be avoided by forcing more
aircraft to endure longer delays.
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- Pilots and controllers are furious at
the privatisation plan announced last week by Chancellor Gordon Brown,
accusing him of threatening safety standards by introducing a profit motive
into a service concerned with safety.
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- Joe Magee, aviation officer of the air
traffic controllers' union IPMS, said: "Six reports of an overloaded
system in little more than three weeks is excessive. Overload means the
sector (of sky) has more aircraft in it than it should have... Controllers
are getting very worried about what they are being asked to do."
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- The air traffic control centre at West
Drayton near Heathrow, which handles aircraft using the main airports in
England and Wales and flying over Britain, dealt with 1.6 million flights
last year, compared with one million in 1989. Traffic is growing at around
6 per cent each year but there is no more room to expand West Drayton.
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- It was supposed to be replaced in 1996
by a £350 million centre at Swanwick, Hampshire, but this has been
repeatedly delayed by serious computer malfunctions and might not now open
before 2000.
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