Walloon airports are in full expansion and Belgocontrol wants to further contribute to their success. This is why the air navigation service provider is launching a new recruitment campaign to find the future air traffic controllers who will work at Liège and Charleroi control towers.
This campaign started with a press conference at the Executive Terminal of Charleroi Airport, attended by Aviation24.be.
Johan Decuyper, CEO of Belgocontrol:
“Liège and Charleroi airports’ growth is impressive. Belgocontrol has contributed for years to this boom by investing, in consultation with SOWAER, in the technical infrastructure of Walloon airports. At the same time, we have been recruiting new ATCOs since 2015 for all our sites. We are now moving up a gear with this tailor-made campaign for our Liège and Charleroi control towers. We offer our employees a François Bellot, Federal Minister of Mobility unique job in an exciting sector.”
François Bellot, Belgian Federal Minister for Mobility:
“It is imperative for Belgocontrol to continually improve the service delivered to its customers and to all airports in our country. This performance objective requires an effective recruitment policy, especially as the increasing operations at Liège and Charleroi airports involve the expansion of teams. I welcome this call for applications and invite all potential candidates to come forward.”
Jean-Luc Crucke, Walloon minister for Airports:
“Liège and Charleroi airports are major assets for the economic development of Wallonia. To guarantee a safe economic growth of these two hubs, air traffic control and safety need to be ensured in an optimal way on both airports. I can only welcome the launch of this specific recruitment campaign aiming at strengthening ATCOs’ teams.”
Practical details
Candidates must be at least 17 (and get their certificate of upper secondary education this year) and no older than 26. Registrations are open until 22 April 2018 via the Belgocontrol website: https://www.belgocontrol.be/air-traffic-controller. Interested candidates will find there all the information on the job of air traffic controller, the admission criteria and eliminating tests.
Friday, March 23, 2018
Additional information
In the Q&A session that followed the press conference, Johan Decuyper said that to avoid the periods without ATC at Liège and Charleroi before the newly-hired candidates complete their formation, some foreign ATCos had been hired. But Christian Delcourt said that currently in Liège there are only 19 ATCos instead of 24; nevertheless, the situation has already improved.
Belgocontrol (which has in total 850 employees on its payroll) is hiring 30 new controllers each year. They are trained for a specific airport, but now Belgocontrol would like to pool them so that they can work in more than one airport.
This is particularly important since the backup need not be at a tower near the airport: towers can be decentralised, and a discussion is ongoing on where to locate a contingency tower serving both Walloon airports.
