Air Traffic Controller

They take students nearly every year at the training facility at Shannon

They generally dont keep many on however

While it may be a great qualification/skill, you may have to travel for a job

The IAA have taken on very few trainees since the start of this decade, two full intakes of 24 plus a mixed intake of 12 Irish/12 Icelandic students.

The age profile of controllers in the company means that some effort will have to be made to address future staff shortages, whether that will be by taking on new trainees or by direct intake of qualified controllers is yet to be decided.

The company is currently in negotiations with the controllers union re. pay and conditions, I'd expect some move to be made on staffing once those negotiations are concluded.

Neo#, I am fairly certain that you can ask HR at the IAA to place you on an interest list so that they will contact you if they do start recruiting new trainees.

As an alternative, take a look at the UK's NATS. They have regular intakes of trainees.

.........or train to become a controller with VATSIM! You'll need some knowledge of it to get into it though

I'd say VATSIM would give you a great idea of what its like. Basically, on those microsoft flight sim games, you can play online with real people flying and real people controlling. Its very popular. To fly you have to own the game but its free to ATC. Just register and download VRC. VRC simulates the radar system used by air traffic controllers to guide aircraft along their routes through the simulated world on VATSIM.

Was at a flight sim convention as an exhibitor and saw a demonstration of this, was quiet impressed, the controller was explainng that at peak times the controllers at Heathrow deal with about 80% of the traffic load of the real airport.

I'm on Vatsim with a controller rating, and having visited the new Shannon ATC center - I was very surprised at how realistic it is.

I could follow everything on screen, decode flightstrips and understand the terminology and procedures. Definitely worth getting into if you've any interest in aviation (as a pilot or Controller)

Recruitment starting today:

Details

Online application only.

Great info and links guys. Long term IT person here thinking about a career change. Is 30 too old to do this? I think I'd be good at it. These simulators could help me get in the mindset needed to do the aptitude test. So good stuff.

Anyway, anyone know what the working hours are. I know it's a 24/7/365 job, but how long does a shift last. Do you do multiple short shifts in one day?

Does the training allowance come in under the tax exempt levels, anyone know?

Ginger wrote:

Based of what my dad used to do it was 5 on and 3 off in rotation. Normally it was a Late (start at 1 finish at 11), Swing, Morning, Nights 1 nights 2, 3 days off. That was in snn

Thanks for that, but I'm not following, does that mean 5 days on, 3 days off, or 5 hours on and 3 hours off and then another 5 hours, so your shift would be maybe 13 hours in all.

Ginger wrote:

5 Days on 3 days off... but that is a while back.. it could have changed..

ah right, I understand....thanks Ginger

I saw ads for trainee ATCs in the Indo last Thursday. More details. Online application only. Closing date 10th Sept. Born before 1/5/1988. 5 passes in Leaving Cert to include maths with min of grade C in 2 higher level papers. Training is 2 years and training allowance is 18k pa. On graduation salary is 47k. Online application form available at www.iaa.ie