I have to confess I was surprised to read our Leader of the Opposition, Ezzard Miller's , “deep concern” over currently progressing overseas recruitment of a relatively large batch of air traffic controllers (ATCs), pending award of two-year contracts by the Cayman Islands Airports Authority (CIAA). See iNews Cayman's article published Feb 19 2019 “Cayman Islands Opposition raises concerns about overseas aviation recruitment” at: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/cayman-islands-opposition-raises-concerns-about-overseas-aviation-recruitment/

The article continues:

“Mr. Miller has called for a review
of the recruitment plan, and the withdrawal and replacement of the
two-year contracts with temporary employment terms. That adjustment
would facilitate the launch of a recruitment and training drive to
enable Caymanians to replace the selected incoming overseas officers
as soon as possible, the Leader of the Opposition said.

“According to sources, the overseas
recruitment drive is seeking to increase the staff complement by more
than 50%. This compares to a workload increase of 3.4% in aircraft
movements in 2017.

“Statistics for 2018 have not been
published, but partial figures for the year suggest a similarly very
minor increase for that year, while 2016 air traffic increased by
approximately 1.8% and 2015 decreased by approximately 1%. (See
statistics for international, domestic and private aircraft movements
at:

https://www.caymanairports.com/ceos-welcome/statistics/;

and note that Cayman Brac’s 2017
figures were unavailable on the online data.)

“Based on these figures, aircraft
movements for 2016, 2017 and 2018 combined should not exceed 10%,”
Mr. Miller said, “still not significant enough to warrant
increasing the staff complement by more than 50%.”'

Miller concludes with, '“I is ironic
and totally unacceptable that rather than training our own people we
are seeking to invest in the initiation and further training of an
influx of new controllers,” he said, adding: “It never fails to
astonish me how short-sighted we continue to be, to our people’s
detriment.”

My surprise at all this is because I
can remember publishing many press releases on our Caymanian Air
Traffic Controllers recruitment, training and employment at our
airports. I have also wondered at how the CIAA was coping with all
the additional aircraft landing here, most around the same time of
day.

I waited for a response. It was not
long coming.

A press release from The Cayman Islands
Airports Authority (CIAA) was in my email iIn Box before I could have
my breakfast. We have published it in full today – see “Cayman
Islands Air Traffic Controllers Recruitment”.

The release does not mention Mr.
Miller's release but it does address very well all of his concerns.

It starts with, “The CIAA has been
actively recruiting Caymanians to fill the role of Air Traffic
Controllers on a continuous basis for many years”. It then goes
into the specifics.

It also mentions the stringent
regulatory requirement for minimum staffing levels in accordance with
UK CAA CAP 670 Part D. A copy of these requirements was also enclosed
and we published it, too.

From the PR:

“In Quarter 1 of 2015, two local Air
Traffic Control Assistants attended overseas training in Trinidad &
Tobago, and were successful in both theoretical and practical on the
job training, and were validated for regular duty in the Charles
Kirkconnell Internal Airport (CKIA) ATC unit in Quarter 4 of 2016.

With their success, the CIAA
transferred two existing Cayman Brac ATCOs from CKIA to ORIA to
complement that unit, in an attempt to meet the stringent regulatory
requirement for minimum staffing levels in accordance with UK CAA CAP
670 Part D

Unfortunately, only one of those
transferred officers was successful in obtaining an ORIA unit
competency.”

The PR then lists all the requirement
drives the CAA have initiated. It also states “ATCO shortages is an
acute global phenomena, affecting developed and under- developed
nations equally.” this is something iNews Cayman has also reported.

Conclusions from PR:

“The best case planning scenario for
the qualification and validation of an ATCO is 24 months, with the
average being 28 months over the past five years, broken down as
follows:

CIAA on boarding & familiarization:
3 months AB Initio training (local to the Cayman Islands): 9 months
Overseas Training Secondment: 7 months On-the-Job-Training: 9 months
(average, but not less than 6 months)

The offer of a two year contract is
based on the expectation that after two years local candidates will
be at an advanced stage of qualification and will subsequently be
able to fulfil the obligations of the post. It is neither
advantageous nor prudent to pay for contracted services, whenever
local candidates are available.”

Finally:

“The CIAA has evidenced our
commitment to recruiting and training our local population by its
current employee head-count of 196 employees, with exactly one
Work-Permit holder.

Both The CIAA and The Civil Aviation
Authority of the Cayman Islands have identified an immediate need for
additional officers and in response to these regulatory requirements,
the CIAA is pursuing the short term (two year) mitigation by
employing experienced ATCOs through contracted services, to whom it
will have no long term commitments.”

I am pleased to report the horse only
jumped and did not bolt before the gun went off.