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No worries. Everyone at that organisation is paid boatloads of money. [1] They don't pay taxes on it. (~10%, "for solidarity", which means they get to enjoy h
by candiodari 9y ago
No worries.
Everyone at that organisation is paid boatloads of money. [1]
They don't pay taxes on it. (~10%, "for solidarity", which means they get to enjoy healthcare paid by ~55% taxed nationals)
And 90% of the organisation (especially the management) has absolutely nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with guiding planes anywhere. In fact, those departments are severely understaffed. The department doing "regulatory support" is about 2/3rds of the organisation (tldr: making sure half the local government officials don't have to get their own coffee - and before you say it, no, Eurocontrol employees don't get them coffee, they're merely in charge of making sure someone's there to get them coffee, and steak, cake, and ... The coffees, I might add, are baffling. Done from a steam boiler machine in front of you, with fair trade beans, sweetened not with sugar, but with expensive imported bars of chocolate meled in milk that's frothed in front of you (they put in the chocolate somehow while they're frothing the milk with steam, melting it in while not getting the steam on the chocolate somehow), and you get the rest of the case of that (expensive) chocolate to take home for the kids. No, not when you ask, they'll ask you if you want that. Btw, it's not really the rest of the case they give you, you get a fresh case. Oh and of course, of the bar they opened they prepare just one coffee (about 1/4th of the bar). The rest gets thrown into the trashcan, they don't use the same bar for the next coffee. As for the steaks ... oh my God)
And in case you're wondering: the odds of 2 planes colliding with zero guidance outside of the ATC zones around airports (which aren't covered by Eurocontrol) over even a region as big as Europe are more than 10 billion to 1, against, per year. So if Eurocontrol didn't exist at all, and we just allowed every plane to fly wherever ... nothing would go wrong at all.
So ... what is the problem here ? Disruption of millions of travelers for no reason whatsoever ? Let's please not pretend anyone at Eurocontrol cares (well, they care about not being interfered with, and that will make them care NOW, but if one thing's guaranteed it's that the Software/ATC departments will remain the same size, and only the bribery departments will grow)
[1] http://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/content/documents/jobs-section/scale-basic-monthly-salaries-officials-annex3-staff-regulations.pdf http://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/content/docum...