NAS confusion

Multi-core Cranium

2011-12-08T02:19:00.001-05:00

The past few months have been filled with the trials and tribulations of training. My trainee (TQ) has spent the last few months training on the HNK/DNY sectors. This is my first main project (it seems strange to refer to my friend/coworker/trainee as a "project", but it is hard to categorize anything that takes over two years to develop as anything different - I would never mean to dehumanize....) as a primary instructor where the trainee was not already a controller somewhere else before transferring to my area. It has been a learning experience for everyone.

After spending the obligatory two months in the classroom and simulators, honing phraseology and so forth, TQ hit the ground running, so to speak, and left me with a false sense that this might be easier than I thought. This was right after Labor Day, and the weather in our area was really quite horrendous that first week he was back on the floor. There were epic levels of traffic (since we were working all of our normal traffic, plus all of New York Center's traffic, and some of Washington's traffic, and they were all deviating). I took over the frequency for a few extended periods of time, but only because I couldn't keep up, let alone would I expect a brand new radar trainee to keep up. "Just watch for a little while" is pretty much all I could muster as words of wisdom.

And then the worst of the summer traffic was behind us. It still gets busy, but not for hours and hours at at time at freakish levels. Mentally, we all settled in for a long winter. I took a few days off from work in the early autumn, and the secondary instructor on our training team was involved in a union project of his own, leaving TQ to train with different instructors.

As thick as our regulations manual appears, the actual performance of the job depends on strategy and actual execution of these imposing regulations. We call it "technique." There is more than one way to get planes A, B, C, D, E and F across the sector to points Q, R, S, T, U, V in a safe, orderly and efficient manner.

So, TQ was exposed to many new and different techniques from other trainers in the area. Hardly a day would go by without an accusing "who on earth taught you to do it THAT way!?"

As long as the rules are being followed appropriately, no one is seriously going to judge your technique. But technique is everything. So while I, or someone else, may not agree that TQ's way is the best way, as long as the job is getting done, we'll simply discuss legal alternatives that would work in that same situation. Or theoretically if that one plane was a prop? Or if there was icing at 17000? Or if you gave that clearance and the pilot said "unable"? Or if these planes had to deviate around storms? Or if you had 30 miles in trail to Kennedy. Oh, wait, you do. Get on that!

So after a while, TQ's brain started turning into a confused mushy sponge. The basics got lost in there somewhere. Life wasn't very fun for a while. It made me start thinking about what was going through his mind. Which made me start thinking about what goes through MY mind when I'm working traffic. After sifting through some weird stuff that I'm sure you don't care about, I may have actually found something useful to dole out as worthwhile instructor-ey type insight. A few weeks later and I have an even weirder thought that maybe some of you non-ATC folks might find it interesting.

Compared to your math teacher in High School or even the flight instructor at your local airport, Air Traffic Controllers don't receive much of any instruction on how to be instructors. They send us up to the classroom for a few days of team building type exercises, but that's about it. We learn how to control airplanes and how to be future instructors all from the same people: The instructors in our area. And they, of course, learned in the same fashion. Training is supposedly tamer now. No more "power training" with rulers held at threatening angles or random headset unplugging to draw your map for the millionth time with a golf pencil. Heck, they can't even yell at the trainee's for bad strip marking. Strips are gone. The older generation has almost all retired. These things are all myths to me.

One question always arises in any discussion about ATC training, however. Can you teach someone to "see traffic? This is a two part question. (1)What exactly would be the process of teaching someone how to "see traffic" and (2) do we currently do that or know how to do that?

Ok. I know some of you may have expected one of those questions to be "what exactly is 'seeing traffic' anyway?" It all revolves around a controller's "scan".

Let me start by saying that I enjoyed radar classes when I was in college more than tower classes because I preferred having all of the planes right in front of me on the (simulated) radar scope as opposed to being completely surrounded by airplanes in the control tower (simulator). My scan in the radar was better. I rarely have to turn my head around. I like that. I belong in a dark room. Yes, I accept that. Luckily, the FAA called me up 7 years ago and said "you are going to work in a dark room." Yay for me.

Scanning a radar scope starts with one airplane. Pick one. Generally, you would start your scan on the part of the scope that has a tendency to contain airplanes that have a high chance of being in need of your attention. If nothing pops out at you as extremely urgent (planes about to enter another sector without a handoff, aircraft not at their assigned altitude, two airplanes at the same altitude and very close together, etc) then a quick scan in that area commences.

When I say quick, I mean spend about one second per plane. That one second of time would contain the follow mental process: Is there anything that I told myself I'd take care of next time I scanned this plane? What altitude is this plane currently at, what did I assign, does it look like they'll make the restriction I issued if I issued one, are they on their cleared route of flight? Where are they going, what do I have to do with this plane based on its type of aircraft and destination, how much do I have left to accomplish? If everything seems normal, and the answer to the last question is "nothing", then I take another second to flash the handoff to the next sector if it isn't already and I move on to the next plane nearby. If there are other planes going to the same place on the same route, I'll check the speeds. This may take a few seconds as speed is not always permanently displayed. If the answer to the tasks accomplished question is not "nothing", then what is there left to do? Here comes the seeing traffic part: What do I have left to do with this plane and what other planes are going to interfere with my goals. And so the eyes will take over again. Where could potential issues come from?

The extensive training we receive at each sector teaches us that each common traffic flow has a certain number of confliction points with other common flows of traffic. These common danger zones are where we look first. My brain then tends to look in an arc shaped pattern, searching for planes that are a similar distance from where this plane would cross with them. If a plane is 25 miles west of DNY, and other planes tend to cross at DNY, then I'm looking for planes that are about 25 miles away from DNY in all directions, with my arc changing distance depending on the wind. If the wind is strong out of the west, planes traveling south and north will fly a little slower than the eastbound traffic, and the westbound traffic will fly the slowest, so I need to search closer to DNY in those cases. My short term memory should remind me if I have any other planes that are flying abnormally fast or slow, and I should do an extra search for those planes, expecting to find the unexpected. Another common traffic flow is for BDL arrivals. Common conflictions include LGA arrivals along a similar path, but often at a slower speed since they are lower in altitude already (and because Air Canada has been flying REALLY slow lately), PHL traffic coming from the north at FL240 or FL260 most often, and traffic climbing slow out of BDL westbound. ALB arrivals tend to conflict with EWR arrivals first, watch out for HPN and SWF traffic, then LGA props lower, and then ALB departures. There are over a dozen of these common flows in each sector and they all cross in a 3D pattern.

Once you spend a second or two doing this scan for other conflicting planes, and you've scanned most of the other planes around your original plane, the overall scan order then moves around the scope to areas of lesser priority until we're back scanning the plane where we started.

When we get really busy, these are the default settings our brains use to increase the speed of our scan. A good scan forces the brain to keep looking for conflicts it doesn't expect. When all the airplanes are deviating around storms and others are on reroutes, this extra scan is required for every airplane every time. So while you're used to a scan taking a second or two for each plane, now its taking maybe five times longer, yet your brain is stressed out and wishes it could scan in half the time. After a while, this gets frustrating.

Can we teach someone how to go about "seeing traffic" in a way I just explained? Sure. We can. We do. But with limited traffic. It takes time to go through and talk about each and every plane, just from a scanning perspective. Then you have to talk about what to do with that plane, technique wise, and then that changes how that one plane interacts with all the others, of course.

The issue isn't that we can't teach someone how to scan airplanes on a radar scope. The issue is how do they react to the really busy sessions with a frustrated brain. Do they dwell on little lapses in their scan when they discover their overlooked traffic a few moments later (perhaps when their scan finally gets around to seeing that previously overlooked target)? If they've made it to Radar training, hopefully we've established that they'll never just freak out and give up. That's rule number 1: Never give up. Ever.

As I list all of these mental questions, keep in mind that while many of them are "yes/no" type questions, or perhaps there is a "well, if this happens, then that will happen" question, the key to being a great controller is taking a busy, overwhelming situation, and generating creative solutions to urgent problems that pop up on a second by second basis. Letting your brain operate like a computer program works great most of the time. But most of the time isn't ALL the time. Most of the time doesn't cut it in ATC, either. And so, in order to create a sense of confidence and creativity, trainees need to start understanding why I use my techniques the way I do, when I use them and when I don't use them, and how to decide when to abandon your first plan and create a better one, quick.

I don't always have a good answer for why and how I do things. I wish I did.   On the other hand, changing plans is a basic ATC function. As a controller scans their airplanes, they are thinking of all of that stuff from a few paragraphs above, but there is always one or more back-up plans in place, and thoughts about how that back up plan will effect everyone else. TQ has reached that point in the last few weeks. He's not afraid to change a plan. He knows he'll find all the new conflicts quickly. He knows he'll figure out a way to solve any issues that come up. It might not be the way I'd do it, or how anyone else in my area would do it, and I might have to pester him for a few minutes to figure out why he thinks that's a good idea...... And why wouldn't I do that!?

-------------------------

With all of this maximized use of our mental capacity, I think the hardest and most physically damaging aspect of ATC is that we are constantly changing mental speeds. My brain could be thinking at 100 miles a second, my eyes darting all around the scope, contemplating a plan of action for all of my airplanes, and then forecasting the future position of all of my planes to see if my strategy works out if everything else goes according to plan.........but then I need to TALK to one of my airplanes. I suddenly have to think only as fast as my mouth can clearly issue a clearance.

I need to precisely READ the aircraft's callsign in the datablock on the scope, then issue the clearance I intend (distinguishing it from all the other ideas I had about my other planes I was scanning) at a speech rate that can be easily understood and that exudes confidence. Then I need to LISTEN to the pilot read the clearance back to me, and decided if that matches what I just said. Often times, while listening, my brain can go back to scanning. In fact, after reading the callsign, I will usually make a visual scan ahead of the plane that I am talking to, as one last check that what I am in the midst of saying is safe, all the while typing away at the keyboard and making glances down in the corner of the scope to make sure my inputs are being accepted. How do I do that? How do I teach someone else to do that? No one ever taught me this last part. I just do it. It seemed necessary to learn how to do all of these things all at once in order to survive training; to feel confident that I could handle anything. I noticed TQ started doing this recently. I'll move my chair so I can see what he's looking at. After he reads the callsign, I see his eyes move ahead of the plane as he's issuing the actual clearance. I couldn't tell him how to get his mind and body to do that, but he taught himself. A few shaky weeks in ATC will motivate a human to do amazing things.

Till next time....

DM

EAA Part 2 - Wednesday

2011-12-02T00:02:00.001-05:00

New power supply has been procured!

Wednesday, July 27th

Wednesday greeted us with cloudy skies. On top of that, I knew, deep down, that the day ahead could never be like Tuesday. Tuesday was amazing. But at Oshkosh, there is always something new to see; I just had to figure out what I wanted to look for.

First things first: We couldn't all take the bus to the airport again. Wednesday was going to be a half day for me, anyway. I was going to meet my (then) girlfriend's mother (who happened to live in town) for dinner. We hopped in NJ's car and we parked at the seaplane base. A brilliant idea.

The seaplane base was cool, shady, and just a straight-up chill place to hang out. It was a great, relaxing way to start the day. Yet there were still airplane-type things going on. I have always had a suppressed desire to one day own a float plane.

......That feeling has become less suppressed since I get to see one bobbing around everyday on the Merrimack River just slightly downstream from my current residence. Perhaps one day I'll just knock on their door and ask if there is a CFI around.........

So I meandered my way over to an on-going presentation in one of the tents set up around some picnic tables. It was a detailed discussion about how pilots who fly float/sea planes can easily make themselves wet, inverted corpses if they don't act more cautiously. A pleasant thought, indeed. I learned a lot of other useful tidbits over the next hour (calm water is hardest to land on since it becomes invisible as you are about to land on it), but it was getting late in the morning by now, so we hopped on the school bus/shuttle to the main gate. The seaplane base had revitalized us to a certain degree, so we were ready to hop right to it.

Front and center, a jetBlue A320 was proudly on display on the main ramp, 12 oclock and 1 mile. Tours were not currently available when we arrived.

New arrivals to the main ramp were some of Burt Rutan's principal works. Apparently, Erik has a Starship fetish, so he was happy.

I mentioned last time that planes just randomly fly over in formation for no good reason.

It was drizzling on and off, so the early afternoon was spent in the vendor hangers just west of the main ramp. These hangers were filled with row upon row of stuff you can buy for your airplane. I don't have an airplane. I had $34,837 burning a hole in my pocket. Must spend....... Highlights included the Garmin section with their new fancy touch-screen GPS's, the guy who can program your GPS to listen to your voice commands "Insert Golf Delta Mike, Victor Four Three One, Lima Oscar Bravo Bravo Yankee, Kilo Bravo Echo Delta Enter", and the super detailed model airplanes (I'm currently saving real money to get a model of Skyhawk N172DM, in which I flew my first solo flight).

By 2:30pm, it was time for jetBlue to leave so the airshow could get started. They got ground stopped to JFK (or something to that effect). NJ and Erik stayed for the airshow. I caught the city bus back to the house, changed into something a little more respectable than my NAS CONFUSION T-shirt, and found my way across town to my (ex)girlfriend's mother's house. It was very pleasant, the home cooked meal was fantastic, and I got to spend some quality time with her dogs in the backyard. Planes staging for the airshow were constantly flying overhead so I still got the full OSH experience.

I was to graciously leave my dinner hostess around 8pm to pick up my old college roommate at the Appleton airport, but a massive line of thunderstorms predictably delayed his flight (that which he was actually going to be flying, as Expressjet's newest Captain). As luck would have it, this now delayed flight would have been cancelled, sans a captain, until Josh stepped up and volunteered to fly it to Appleton. The flight from Ohare to Appleton takes about 30 minutes. The drive from Oshkosh to Appleton's airport is also about 30 minutes. We took the dogs for a walk and waited for the flight to depart on flightaware.com.

Josh's airplane was finally recovered from a Columbus, OH diversion, and in no time flat, both he and I were bound for the farm-set aerodrome known as Outagamie Country Regional. The passengers were all quite flabbergasted by the sheer amount of lighting that had surrounded their plane on the way up. After the terminal area had cleared out, Josh and the rest of the crew followed, also shocked that they had made it!

We returned to a full house. Chris, another friend from high school, and a coworker from Frontier had arrived from Milwaukee a few hours earlier. Josh's recap of his day led to some passionate aviation nerd-talk. Three airline pilots, two controllers, and an avionics technician. Who gets to sleep on the couch?

Till next time....

DM

Ignored on so many levels.

2011-11-14T23:59:00.001-05:00

If you are wondering "Oshkosh is more than just one day...WTF!?":

I lost power for five days from the Nor'easter a few weeks ago. My surge protector apparently didn't work too well and the contents of my hard drive that has all of my OSH pictures on it is currently unavailable. I have them backed up to another drive, but my photo-editing software is on that other computer, also. The next few days of my OSH experience was shrouded in overcast skies, so editing is definitely necessary to brighten them up a bit. Excuses, Excuses..... I guess I just have been ignoring you all again.

Allow me to revert your attention to something else.

Have you seen the IBM commercial about how the IBM'er dude is going to build a better/smarter planet? Specifically, the 30 second episode about how said IBM'er is going to work closely with Boeing to suddenly land a billion airplanes in 5 minutes at LAX with some new software.........

I tend to be a little cynical when I watch TV, so I immediately asked a few rhetorical questions.

1) So I guess if you fly an Airbus or an Embraer you don't get to land at LAX anymore?
2) Why wouldn't you work with the FAA to build a better NAS?

Since I have a blog, I get to make the second question non-rhetorical.

I bet IBM would love to get their hands on a couple of billion dollars worth of taxpayer money to start working on a system they don't know how to create just yet, and I bet controllers will be ignored throughout most of the process. Or has that already happened? When they show all the planes lined up 5 feet apart in the commercial, how "dramatized" is that intended to be? Is our aviation system safe because we pour money into it at an ungodly rate or is it safe because there is always a person between the planes and the technology (both in the plane and in the tower/radar room) that ignores all the hype and puts safety first?

This is not something to be ignored. A split second after I asked myself the second question above, I immediately thought "I think I heard about this before at the Praxis Foundation. They might be on to something...."

Check them out on the tab to the right under Adjacent Sectors. Get caught up.

I've got a power supply to replace....

Oh, here is a link to that commercial.

Till next time....

DM

MHT-OSH, EAA Day 1

2011-10-13T22:22:00.034-05:00

Saturday, July 23

I woke up at 4:45am and reported to work for my "Friday" shift around 5:45am. I was angst-y. I hadn't had a day off in a while. Summer traffic was in full force. Recall a few posts I made earlier.....

1:45pm arrived as soon eight hours would allow itself, and I gave work nary a rearview glance. I packed my bags, made sure I had all of my necessary camera/iPod/cell phone accessories, and gave my cats a sorrowed expression that told them it would be a while; feel free to take a nap or two, kitties.

I left around 5pm.

Rule number one when roadtripping: Don't be in a rush. What's the point of stressing out on vacation? Just chill. So I took Route 9 through Keene, NH and Bennington, VT. There is nothing like a nice, mostly quiet, curvy road through New England to get a road trip started right. The first night was spent near the Albany, NY Airport. Time to get some sleep....

Sunday, July 24

I slept well and left around 9am. I am a big fan of the Mohawk River valley on a nice sunny summer morning. The water is calm, the trees are green, the old, rusty Erie Canal infrastructure is interesting, and there tends to be enough trains along the CSX mainline to keep me excited. A solid 8 hours of driving rewarded me with a dinner date, so to speak, with everyone's favorite Cleveland Center controller, SK!!! The Feve, in Oberlin, is highly recommended for lunch or dinner, although the company may make everything better than reality. On second thought, any place that makes tater tots about 10 different ways is always a winner.

After some hearty interfacility ATC banter, I was on my westward way again, sun visors in the down position. I gained an hour just before pulling into my hotel near Gary, IN around 11pm.

Monday, July 25

I love it when a plan comes together. And Monday's plan was ambitious.

One of my best friends from high school, Erik, was flying into Midway airport from Denver on Southwest at 10:35am. So I left my hotel at 9:30am, hopped on the Chicago Skyway, and cut through the south side of town on 59th St. I parked in short term parking, met Erik in the baggage claim, and we were northbound on Cicero Ave by 10:50am....

We stopped for a quick bite to eat and then met another high school friend, NJ (controllers are initials only), for a tour of ORD tower at noon. A friend from college (JR) was working north local and pushing tin quite impressively. JR was departing and arriving 9R, departing 4L. Another controller was departing 32L from T10 in between the 9R arrivals, and another controller was arriving and departing 10, arriving 4R. Truly a sight to behold. One of many to come....

After a few hours of that, NJ, Erik, and I got a late lunch/early dinner at a local Chicagoland joint. We beat the traffic north into Wisconsin, arriving in Oshkosh around 6pm.

We rented a house from a very hospitable family who lived near the lake on the northeast side of town. The bus ran right down the street. We bought our tickets for the airshow online. Everything was all set.

Tuesday, July 26th

Tuesday was the second day EAA was open, but our first. It was 85 degrees, severe clear, light winds. Perfect.

We caught the bus at 7:15am. We were under the impression that ALL the buses ran until 11pm the week of EAA. Wrong. Only the EAA bus to and from downtown runs that late. The rest of the town stops at 6:30pm. Oh well, we'll worry about that later and figure out alternate plans for the next few days. We transferred downtown to the EAA bus and it spit us out next to the main entrance. I was surrounded. I was overwhelmed. I had a grin on my face that was starting to hurt :)

At first there are campers and trailers as far as the eye can see. Then there are people as far as the eye can see. And then there are airplanes as far as the eye can see.

We exchanged our online tickets for wrist bands and entered the sprawling airport/fairground. At ground level, there are immediately vendors everywhere. Cessna, Pilatus, Beechcraft, Cirrus, etc have acres of grass carpeted static displays of their latest and greatest offerings.

In the sky, there are constantly airplanes flying around in various attitudes, speeds, and formations.

Next time I go...I'm riding the Tri-Motor. I'd regret not going up this time, but there was plenty else to see....

The three of us became a group of 5 when we met up with my good friend Sam and his father. You may have read a little about it here. After watching a Q&A with Bob Hoover (it was Bob Hoover Day, after all) we strolled around the Warbirds area for the rest of the morning. Some DC-3s were parked there, too.

We got some lunch and then split up for the afternoon. The rows and rows of airplanes seemingly went on forever and I never got sick of the variety. NJ and I would tease Erik with "look, another green slash this big (two fingers an inch apart) on the scope, hahaha." Erik fixes and installs avionics on actual airplanes for a living, so he wasn't as impressed with seeing the planes in real life as certain radar controllers were.

We set up just north of midfield for the afternoon airshow. It started a little late due to an incident involving an F18 overshooting the runway. Once the firetrucks and personnel were back in their appropriate places, the craziness began...

The Navy is celebrating their 100th year of flight this year and so the EAA attempted to fly every plane the Navy ever flew over OSH airport simultaneously without crashing into anything. They mostly succeeded.

There were at least 100 airplanes flying various patterns over the field. The choreography was excellent, as it really conveyed the sense of chaos that a Vietnam-era skirmish would emit.

I couldn't capture it with the wide angle, but there were planes EVERYWHERE low level, and what seemed like hundreds of planes in formation flying overhead in four directions.

At the end of said demonstration, one of the rare early Vietnam jets also ran off the end of the runway, narrowly avoiding the F18 which was tail up in the grass from earlier in the day. Everyone was OK, and a sigh of relief was heard throughout Oshkosh. This was followed by an aerobatic helicopter. I was a little disturbed by the sounds being made by the short, twirling blades cutting through the air at unnatural angles.

This was quickly followed by some stunning airmanship by Sean Tucker and the Shell Aerobatic Team. I am still speechless about this. (Sam has some really good pics on his blog of the airshow from his vantage point).

The grand finale was when a bunch of pilots who aren't as skilled as Bob Hoover tried to recreate the same maneuvers that made Bob Hoover famous. The lackluster performance proved the greatness of Bob Hoover. Success!

Afterwards, we meandered our way south to the Vintage rows where Sam had his C170 parked. The sun was slowly setting, and we took up a comfortable seat under its wing. At this point, the airport was "open" again, and we had a front and center view near the departure end of Runway 36L/R (the right side is actually a taxiway most of the year). Reduced separation is used for departures. Instead of 3000-6000 feet between departures, most aircraft at EAA are only required 1500 feet. This results in a departure being launched off each of the three runways about every 15 seconds. Departures off of 36L/R would immediately turn out to the southeast (remaining south of runway 9) over the lake and would slowly diverge on course, often with faster climbing planes right on top of lower slower planes. Everything was visual. Planes were also departing runway 9 and turning northeast and west. The math is staggering: Each runway would depart one airplane every 15 seconds on average. That's 4 departures per minute. Times 3 runways. 12 planes per minute would depart OSH. Times 60 minutes = over 700 departures an hour. Ok, so lets say its a little less than once every 15 seconds. 500 ops per hour? It kept up steady and ridiculous for over two hours.

As the sun set, Sam went off to get a weather briefing for his proposed early morning departure the next day. NJ, Erik and I ended up at the Vintage Restaurant for a fancy sit down meal in the open tent watching dusk colors fade into airplane strobe flashes lighting up the night sky.

We took the EAA shuttle back to the downtown bus stop and called a taxi. Also waiting for a taxi was our newest friend: A hilarious and partially intoxicated Australian first officer for Qantas Airlines. He flew from Sidney to LAX and then connected a few times en-route to Wisconsin. The four of us shared the cab, which eventually arrived, since this Aussie was trying to get half way between downtown and our rental house. We picked up as much of his cab fare as he'd allow and found ourselves back at the house, not really all that tired, by 11:15pm.

An amazing day I'll never forget. I'm still smiling!

Till next time....

DM

I would make a horrible photojournalist....

2011-10-11T23:17:00.007-05:00

I repeat: I would make a horrible photojournalist. It has been over two months since I took my EAA Oshkosh vacation. I am just now in a position to tell you how freaking awesome it was. I can show you, as well. It was overwhelming then. The mortal life that I returned to back here in NH was less than I could have desired. It is less overwhelming now.

I was in, for a year and a half, a fantastic relationship with a smart, funny, amazingly beautiful girl who I honestly could see myself with for a LONG time. By the time I left for my vacation two months ago, it had become obvious that who I was, and, most notably, my strengths as a person and a controller, had become nothing but a list of inadequacies. My decision to end what had become such an unfortunate circumstance took little time to justify in my own mind but the process of re-establishing my own emotional confidence, so that I could sit here at home and tell you a fun and/or interesting story with enthusiasm regarding my work, was much more gradual.

So here I am, back with you all. Life has stabilized. But with regards to what I'd like to share with you, I am a little backlogged.

Over the next few days, I hope to give you some recap of my experience in Wisconsin this past summer. I had a great time, and I have no idea why it took me so long to go......

Till next time....

DM

EAA - A week not working for the FAA

2011-07-23T15:52:00.002-05:00

I am moments away from setting off to Wisconsin for EAA AirVenture 2011. I will be on the scene from Tuesday to Friday, wearing a fabulously nerdy NAS CONFUSION T-shirt with the video map of the Albany Sector on the back. If you see me, feel free to introduce yourself. I'm friendly in real life, don't worry.

If you are going to Oshkosh, or not, please join me in wishing everyone involved (especially those flying) a fun and safe week.

Till next time...

DM

Losing the flick ; Losing my freq

2011-06-26T22:36:00.007-05:00

It's the first session of the day. I'm told to plug in at the Utica/Watertown combined sector as a Tracker. My job, as the third set of eyes, will be to make some phone calls if necessary and to do the typing. I take a seat in front of the scope, fingers on the keyboard at the ready. I am actually the fourth set of eyes, as there is Radar training-in-progress. The training team has just taken a boat-load of handoffs and they are starting to check in. Some of you may remember this map from before:

Green is level traffic, Red is descending aircraft and Blue are climbing aircraft. It looks like a mess, but the main flow of traffic is level or climbing towards SYR VOR on the west side of the sector. There is quite a lot of westbound traffic at this moment, and I'm growing concerned. There are two very well placed thunderstorms in our sector, as shown as elongated north-south green ovals here:

The bold black lines show how the deviations will unfold. Planes don't fly through thunderstorms for good reason. Everyone's workload increases. Planes are now checking in three at a time from the CAM sector to our east already deviating around one storm, getting bumpy rides, and asking for something other than "direct SYR when able" (the last sector gave them that not realizing there was another storm at SYR). The trainee needs to kick it up a notch (and so do I, frankly) as the frequency is now completely full of nonstop chatter about turbulence, altitude requests, weather deviation requests, needs for shortcuts, etc. A few ALB departures check in, and they need a westbound turn to miss the first storm. They are cleared to do so, but as they make their turn to SYR, they realize there is a storm there. Planes are keying up their mic's at the same time and there is a frustrating moment of squealing and garbling in my ear. I take that moment to look for something better to do.

All of these westbound flights are going to deviate left of course into RKA's airspace, so I make the keyboard entry to force a full datablock onto their scope for as many planes as I can. But the Radar is giving climb clearances, and I'm struggling to keep up. I'm rushing to put in the step climb inputs.

INT 320 439 ENTER

INT 300 032 ENTER

"amend altitude, maintain FL260, deviate left of course, Buffalo when able"

INT 260 876 ENTER

QS DL/BUF 876 ENTER

Crap, since he's stopped under RKA's airspace, he'll need a pointout to DNY sector instead. I get the D-side to do that, pointing frantically at datablock....

PVD 24 876 ENTER

Uh, what just happened? Who was that climb for?

I hear numbers in my head, but I'm not getting complete information and I don't know what to do about it.

The instructor has taken over at this point and is now talking even faster. This is one impressive rush of planes in the middle of our scope now. The trainee needed to ramp up his speech rate and overall speed, but didn't. He was still cruising down a dirt road in Kansas in his rusty ole' pick-up truck, takin' it slow to avoid the rumblings of the washboard. I was right there sitting next to him in the passenger seat, barely keeping up. Now we're on the autobahn, in HV's Porsche. Oh crap, what on earth is going on. I think I'm 6 transmissions behind now. Airplanes are climbing, but the data blocks don't reflect it. No one has time to let me catch up. The planes are still moving, they're going left around the storms no matter what. Every plane that we have requires at least four of the following: a climb, a stopped climb for crossing traffic, a turn for traffic, a weather deviation and the amendment to the datablock so Cleveland knows what they are doing, a pointout to RKA or DNY sector, and a handoff. An arm keeps reaching around me to use the trackball.... At least someone knows what is going on.

My D-side is helping me catch up, too, but other sectors are calling both of us because I'm not taking handoffs from them, or they have their own traffic that they need to pointout to us.....

I'm typing as fast as I can, but it isn't fast enough. I'm not hearing callsigns very clearly, so I don't know which plane got that last clearance. Holy crap, the planes are everywhere.

My Radar controller says:
"Delta xxxx, for traffic climb and maintain FL380, deviate left of course, direct YWT VOR when able."

I type:
ALT 380 739 ENTER
QS DL/YWT 793 ENTER

The D-side puts in QU YWT 793 ENTER to take out all the intermediate, and now obsolete, fixes in the flightplan.

PVD 10 793 ENTER
C 793 ENTER

"793" (the three numbers before ENTER) is the computer code for that airplane. I changed the altitude, put "DL/YWT" (deviate left, YWT vor when able) in the fourth line of the datablock, pointed the plane to Sector 10 (RKA) and flashed the plane on to Cleveland Center. That is one plane taken care of, 26 more to go.

All these planes want FL340-380 as a final altitude. You could cover 8 of them with a fingertip, and your hand would be surrounded by 10 others. Not too many planes are coming the other way at odd altitudes eastbound, so we start using those, too, as a temporary I'm-running-out-of-altitudes move. (We generally keep westbound planes at even thousands (FL360 FL320 etc), and eastbound planes at odd thousands (FL310 FL370 etc)).

Since I'm spending all my time catching up, my D-side is trying to keep the datablocks apart in his spare time, while not taking phone calls from everyone around him. Not sure exactly what is going on over there. I'm not sure exactly what is going on in front of me on the scope either, for that matter. Uh, where was I?

I hear an Ottawa departure get a "Deviate right, when able direct EXTOL, J59"

As I type the QS DL/EXTOL I realize that when that plane comes around the west side of that storm at FL360, there is a definite conflict with another plane deviating around the south side that storm, also at FL360. I point, again frantically at the soon-to-be-imminent situation. It got the Radar controller's attention and he wisely descends the southbound plane to FL350.

INT 350 938 ENTER 10 938 ENTER

I look over at RKA's scope and motion to the plane now at FL350 and make sure they are OK with it. They start scanning for any conflicting eastbound planes already at FL350....there is a Hartford arrival out there in Cleveland's airspace....RKA's D-side makes the call to start an early descent into Hartford....They take the handoff from us.

Uh, what else is going on. I have no idea. A plane is climbing above the last altitude I put in for it a while back. Is that supposed to be happening? "Yah, I gave him 34"

INT 340 103 ENTER PVD 10 103 ENTER

Is he deviating yet?

"Yah, these four are."

PVD 10 303 ENTER PVD 10 993 ENTER PVD 011 ENTER Crap forgot the sector number.... The datablock drops off the scope when you forget the sector number. How stupid is that!

PVD 011 He's back.

PVD 10 011 PVD 10 644

I gotta put all the deviations in there too. Hey, D-side, do that, thanks!

Cleveland is getting overwhelmed now as we've begun to hand our mess off to them. I hope we weren't supposed to give them spacing. We went into survival mode and just made sure everyone was at different altitudes. Now that the big blob of planes is abeam the main SYR storm, we are trying to figure out how to get them to diverge a little so we can give them all even-thousand altitudes before they cross Cleveland's boundary. I'm still mostly confused and trying to catch up with my keyboard entries. Our D-side is all over it and points to each plane in order "JHW, Jossy, Peck, London" A vector or two and they're all laterally separated. They're quickly approaching the Cleveland boundary without a handoff so a few phone calls need to be made to sort it all out.

Stueben, Utica, 97 Line...........

------------------

I wish I could go into more detail, but I truly didn't have much of a clue as to what was going on. To say that I was out of breath and, at times, a little scared would be an understatement. I will note also that I do not believe that HV owns a Porsche. For keeping everyone separated for that half hour someone should get him one!

------------------

So, there is a thunderstorm over SYR. Thus, TMU is rerouting planes that would not normally fly over SYR through our sector over SYR. I know this doesn't make any sense, but apparently since we didn't kill anyone before we must be able to handle anything.

Since more planes are coming, and the storms are growing, it is determined that we should split Watertown and Utica sectors up. This does not happen very often, and it tends to lead to some confusion. On the bright side, since we normally have both Watertown's and Utica's frequencies on at the same time, and since different sectors put planes on different frequencies, splitting the sectors means that planes won't talk all over each other without knowing it. Planes sometimes end up on the wrong frequency, but at least they can only talk one at at time.

So, the training team and my D-side went across the aisle open up Watertown sector. I was left to chill at Utica. A nice, simple, high altitude sector with a thunderstorm slowly moving eastbound. Watertown sector owns below me and all the airspace north of me. I now own just a rectangular shaped sector, FL310 and above, as shown below:

Many of the planes comprising the next rush of traffic ended up below FL300, so the move to split the sectors worked out well. I was still a little distraught over my still-fresh-in-my-mind performance as a Tracker. Well, at least I had everything under control now. In the rarefied air above FL310, I had a much more manageable number of airplanes and was able to keep up an enjoyable pace.

Cah-SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

What the hell is that? It comes out over the speakers. I hear it in my earpiece. My lone frequency, plus the UHF emergency frequency light up orange as if they are being transmitted on. What the......?

I ask someone how their ride is. No response. I issue a new frequency for a plane entering Cleveland Center. No response. Does anyone hear me? No response.

Sigh.

I attempt to switch to my standby frequencies. It won't let me. How about the Back-Up Emergency Channel (BUEC - yes, lots of car references tonight). Ok, that works. Sort of. It always sounds like a tin can. But, tonight it's especially tin-ey. After a few transmissions it sounds like someone else is keying up at the same time as I am. There is a buzzing, whirring sound as if someone has a stuck mic. But no one does. The planes can hear me enough.... Half of my planes get sent to RKA's frequency. I get Cleveland to take the handoff's early on a few more and switch them over. The rest are fine for now. They are deviating but are altitude separated. So much for the benefit of having one frequency to myself.

I'm told I should try to switch back to my main transmitters. It won't let me. I have no frequency. They must have been struck by lightning. I need to stop blogging about how much I love or hate data-link. I must have jinxed myself. CAM sector is flashing me 4 airplanes. I tell that controller to hold on them for a while. I don't have a frequency right now. I get a puzzled look over the land line. Time to combine Watertown back up with Utica and use Watertown's frequency. I broadcast to everyone left on my frequency to change over to Watertown. Once they all check in across the room, we start the process of combining the sectors back together at the scope where I am sitting. They aren't done training yet so it is now my break. I will take it, thank you. Gotta get ready for the remaining 6 hours of my shift. Anything could happen.

Till next time....

DM

Thrown, for a loop....

2011-06-24T00:26:00.010-05:00

I am not ignoring you. Don't worry.

I have a lot of things I could be blogging about since the last few weeks have been complete chaos due to the weather and higher volumes of traffic after Labor Day.

However, I can't bring myself to relive those stressful moments during my breaks or over my weekend. Its been that bad, especially on Thursdays.

Here is a flightaware.com sampling from this evening:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N567MC/history/20110623/1930Z/KUES/KFRG

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL590/history/20110623/1843Z/KORD/KBDL

Planes were deviating around and/or staying high to top the thunderstorms in the middle of my sector at Rockdale and then when they finally could start down they were too high to meet their normal restrictions. Sometimes other planes got in the way...among other issues.....

It all seemed hellish, hectic, borderline out-of-control. And that feeling didn't go away for over three hours. In the end, though, what was left were some pretty little loops to admire and share with you. Sorry to the pilots and passengers... Storms happen.

Till next time...

DM

Data-Comm Continued

2011-05-31T01:04:00.003-05:00

My last post started a discussion. I continued thinking about what I wrote and how I feel about what I wrote. My guess is that if you are very involved selling data-link to the government you would not invite me to your party. And that is a shame, because I want it, and I'd like to help you make it work for me as a controller. I know it doesn't seem like there's room in this world for moderation or flip-flopping or whatever. As a safety minded controller, I just came right out of the gate with two good reasons not to dismantle the air-ground radios we use now. I may have prefaced it all with "this is why data-link isn't getting off the ground", but I digress.

Data-link (text messages to flight decks) should be expanded beyond the current use of issuing route clearances to airliners at major airports. But it shouldn't be the only form of communications available. Can we afford voice and data-link? Can we afford not to have both? Can we have this conversation?

Let me give you two situations where data-link would really help:

1 - A plane is flying along and has a radio failure. We exchange clearances via text message. YAY!

2 - An Iberian A340 is flying westbound to Ohare through my sector. There are storms over central and southern Michigan. All Ohare traffic is now being rerouted. Have you ever tried to issue a long reroute to a pilot that speaks English as a third language when your sector has 25 other planes in it? How about the other 6 Ohare arrivals in my sector? It sure would be nice to say "American 734, American 12, Emirates 866, Iberian 38, United 792, Eagle Flight 3941, and Flagship 7833, there is a reroute to Ohare, please check your printer, thank you, acknowledge with an ident". And my D-side highlights those planes in his URET, types SYR..YWT..TVC..GRB..MSN.BULLZ1.KORD, SEND. Roger that. Eliminating all repeats on routing clearances would be VERY nice.

And now that that ball is rolling, there are other things that would be nice to see in the 21st century. My D-side could select "send route as displayed in URET". There could be a "Contact Center on (whatever sector has track control's frequency)" button" When a message is sent, the datablock would indicate that somehow, and then change when the message is received. We'd only need to send one message to each plane at a time since we still have voice communications as a primary way to issue clearances.

Any other ideas?

Thanks for the comments so far.

Till next time....

DM

Time Out - NextGen Ramblings

2011-05-27T22:22:00.004-05:00

Apparently, we skipped spring and jumped right into summer. Every single shift this past week was a doozy, and I've resorted to a triage of sorts to decide if any of it is blog-worthy. So far, I've been distracted by the latest article at the Praxis Foundation (link on the right).

I'd like to talk to you about "data-link communications."

Some older controllers in my area dismiss the whole thing; Data-link has been "imminent" for 15 years. That may be the case. As a member of the newer generation of controllers, I'm not afraid of change for changes sake. But, even I can't see this integral part of NextGen getting off the ground. Here is why:

1 - What is the last thing you want your bus driver/airline pilot/train engineer doing when you're sitting in the back with your life in their hands? Texting on the cell phone, right? Data-link is texting while driving. A message is received, and one or both pilots have to put their head down and read the message, and then presumably, they have to text someone back that they received the message. Currently, pilots respond on the radio by holding down a button, either on the control stick or nearby in an easy to reach spot (see picture below, arrow points to a little red button - push to talk). Left hand on the yoke, with one finger dedicated to talking on the radio, the right hand is on the throttle. Where in this cockpit would you put the screen to get ATC clearances? I say we keep the clearances in the headset so the eyes can stay focused out the window looking out for things like other airplanes, weather, mountains and/or the runway.

2 - As pilots fly around, they often ask controllers if there is any turbulence ahead. Sometimes this comes off as annoying, but at least when we answer the first call "light to moderate turbulence from FL310 to FL360, everything gets smooth west of SYR", others around hear it, and can simply request FL380 without further conversation. Granted, pilots sometimes stop listening after someone else's call sign is used.....

There are many benefits to having everyone on one frequency together. Pilots hear turbulence reports, as I've mentioned, but they also get a sense of how busy the controller is to a certain extent. They hear about weather deviations, they hear holding instructions and other delays. From personal experience, "verify you are declaring an emergency?" is the quickest way to shut everyone up.

If everyone just got the messages meant for them, they would have NO IDEA what is going on around them. Situational Awareness would be significantly sacrificed. This is a clear case of safety taking a back seat to supposed gained efficiency. This issue would be much more magnified in the Terminal environment around and on the airport.

Obviously, this is a much more significant issue for single pilot operations, of which airline flying generally isn't subject, but I would assume pilots try to spend as little time as possible with their head down entering data into their flight management computers (or being distracted by burnt out landing gear light bulbs....). Lets not encourage them to take a 40 year step back in safety.

Till next time...

DM

Crossing Traffic

2011-05-10T13:16:00.008-05:00

It always strikes me as odd how the same airline will file different routes to the same place, often causing their aircraft to cross paths. The most common example that I have noticed are the BDL/ALB/BTV flights going to MSP. On more than one instance, the BDL (most south) flight ends up taking a routing north of Lake Ontario, the ALB (middle) flight takes a more direct (and most often flown) route over Waterloo (the one in Canada, YWT), and the BTV (most northern departure point) will head southwest over Buffalo and Milwaukee. Being oddly curious about things that don't really matter, I have wondered which flight got there first. Here are two recent examples where I have remembered to keep a copy of the strips so I could look them up on the fabulous flightaware.com (thanks flightaware!) after my shift.

DELTA

Two Delta flights departed Albany and Bradley bound for Atlanta on a Friday afternoon. There were some thunderstorms around, but there wasn't an official weather reroute in effect at the time.

DAL1913 departed Bradley (BDL) first, at 1:09pm, with a flight plan filed over upstate NY to central PA and south over West Virginia. DAL1023 departed Albany (ALB) a few minutes later at 1:12pm flight planed over NJ, eastern PA, overhead DC and then over the Carolinas. Both flights usually fly the eastern route that DAL1023 flew. Both flights' targets merged over the ACOVE intersection just south of ALB, as you see below, and the race was on. DAL1913 was about 2000 feet higher than the DAL1023.

The first flight to arrive was DAL1023, which flew the normal routing to Atlanta (and appears to have deviated around some storms over Maryland), at 3:26pm. Two minutes in-trail was DAL1913, arriving one or two planes back in sequence at 3:28pm.

REPUBLIC (BRICKYARD)

A few days ago, I was sitting in the D-side at Utica and we had two E-170s tied over SYR, both requesting FL360. RPA3305 had departed Montreal (YUL) at 7:47am and RPA3124 who departed Ottawa (YOW) at 7:53am, both bound for Charlotte (CLT). My R-side gave the Ottawa departure, who was a few thousand feet lower in the climb, a vector to the east behind the Montreal departure.

The Montreal departure had filed the normal routing over central PA, West Virginia and and then onto the CLT arrival from the northwest. The Ottawa departure filed Syracuse direct to Roanoke, VA for a different arrival route from the northeast. As strange as this was, it was a Saturday morning, so we simply vectored the Ottawa flight east a little and gave him direct Roanoke, which allowed both flights minimal delay up to FL360 once we had crossed them out and established them on perfectly parallel routes.

Something happened half way to CLT, though. The Montreal departure, who was now west of the Ottawa departure, got massively vectored back east and put well behind the Ottawa departure on the arrival route from the northeast. After all was said and done, RPA3124 (YOW) arrived first at 9:48am, and RPA3305 (YUL) arrived at 9:55am. I'm not sure what happened, as this reroute occurred well beyond my airspace, but I can only assume the YUL departure would have arrived first if nothing had been done, since the flight arrived only 7 minutes behind the other despite the extensive delay vectors.

Till next time...

DM

Show Off

2011-04-25T11:20:00.005-05:00

The public suddenly has its eyes turned on the Air Traffic Controllers. Really?

There has always been something missing from this Blog, in my opinion. Examples of my actual job, unedited. When I have a fantastically busy session at HNK/DNY -- my perfect phraseology, creative crossing restrictions to ensure separation, subtle vectors when a crossing restriction won't work, my D-side calling New York to get control for lower on the ALB arrivals, delivering Area E some awesome looking in-trail -- I can't ask my supervisor for a recording of my frequency and land lines to upload here, and I can't take a quick screen shot from the Falcon program to show off to you how proud I am of the work that we all do on a daily basis. Giving you access to that information is a security risk, a violation of policy, and copyright infringement. And if you're not a pilot, you'll never get access into my building for a tour to see it all first hand. Instead, I do my best to explain what happened using rudimentary maps, some excellent Flightaware.com links, and my words. I appreciate all of you for following along and your comments and encouragement.

But there are people hovering. Folks just waiting for me to screw up. They're pretty sure I will; I'm human, after all. And when I do screw up there is a major possibility that what I have done, what I've said, and how horrible of a person I am, will be plastered all over the media-scape. Life really isn't fair, after all. I'm not allowed to share with you the 99.9999 percent positive aspects of my work with you here, or anywhere, but that .00001 percent may be used against my entire profession without rebuttal.

Perhaps what I want to show off to you all is too complicated, and people could be afraid of what they don't understand. But the point would be made. What I, and 15000 other air traffic controllers in the US, and tens of thousands more around the world do every day, cannot be explained to the general public in specific terms. And if the public can't understand the positive details, how can they judge us on the negative details?

So maybe we should stay locked up behind windowless doors and just do our work everyday in quiet perfection. Have we created an unfair expectation of ourselves because we do our jobs perfectly almost all the time? Have we silenced ourselves by focusing on undramatic things like "safety"? When the specifics of our rare mistakes are made public but we can't defend ourselves with details of our constant and habitual commendable actions but once a year, getting the flying public home in a safe and efficient manner, then we're loosing an unfair fight. The only thing that gets shown off is a negative image. But that isn't how I see my work at all. If only I could show you.

Till next time...

DM

Opportunitiezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2011-04-19T21:20:00.008-05:00

There are a few things that are certain about Air Traffic Control as a career:

1 - The schedule is crazy. Whether I claim to like it or not, working two nights-three days, three nights-two days, or two nights-two days-mid is NOT healthy for humans. I think my best alternative would be working five night shifts, but I pretend to have a social life after my day shifts occasionally.

2 - This job is stressful. I have only recently realized what this means, although I'm not sure if has to do with the soulless, windowless room that I work in, full of computer air or the actual controlling of airplanes. Sometimes its none of the above, sometimes is some of the above, and sometimes its everything and I just want a month off.

The FAA begrudgingly throws money at us to make us stop complaining about how stressful it can be working a crappy schedule. But is that why we make decent money?

Apparently, money is supposed to make me less tired at 4am when I have ZERO airplanes and there is nothing to do but stare at a blank computer screen. Fun experiment: At 12am tonight, turn off all the lights in your house, except for a reading light nearby, sit in front of your computer screen, and stay up until 5:30am. Emailing, reading, phone calls, text messaging, listening to music and "cat naps" are not permitted. Did you make it? Nice job! Do that again every Friday night for the next 20 years. Act professional, stay awake, and quit your bitchin'.

So, I'd like to say that I'm glad this is something we can finally talk about. We have a problem that has not been addressed. Controllers are tired at 3am. Shocker. So instead of ignoring it until we get caught (oh, wait, we're talking about this because we DID get caught), lets do something about it that makes sense and helps us perform our jobs effectively 24/7. None of us like being really tired. Those of us that work the Mid tend to start our weekend off half-dead. This schedule is slowly killing all of us. So lets be open to change for the better. This is an opportunity to increase the safety of the NAS.

Also, I'd be willing to start a conversation about truth number 2 at any time. Stress seems to be something that controllers shrug off. Its an inside joke. But maybe there are ways we can make the stress screw us up less. I can feel it building sometimes, and I don't know what to do about it. Oh wait, I'm not supposed to talk about that. Sorry.

Till next time...

DM

That is all I have to say about this.

Oh. NERD ALERT: I read the entire Northeast US Airport Facility Directory (AFD) to stay awake one night. The preferred routes to the Cape were on page 444. Not sure if that is still true....(FAA related documents are approved reading).

Still There?

2011-04-08T22:59:00.003-05:00

It is usually after 10pm. Or in a winter lull of traffic on a Saturday morning after 9am. Or because all of the sectors are open, even though all of the airports are snowed in. That happened a lot this winter. So, I only have one or two airplanes, or there is a gaggle of flights heading westbound into a strong headwind, and I'm just waiting for Cleveland to take some handoffs. The frequency is quiet. Nice and quiet.

"Still there?"

Ahh, the silence is broken. Most controllers just say "yup." Some say "unfortunately." A few throw down a sarcastic "nope." All are, frankly, unproductive use of the frequency.

Do I know who you are? Do you know who I am? None of these are rhetorical questions, but they are left un-asked most of the time.

Pilots: How about "Boston Center, (callsign), radio check"?

The question is being asked by a pilot who is concerned that they are lost in frequency land. If I answer "Yes" to the original question, then the pilot will assume all is well, even though he/she may be hundreds of miles from my sector, on the wrong frequency. If the pilot had called for Washington Center, for instance, I would have immediately known something was wrong and could attempt to remedy the situation. It's slow in my sector, after all, so I have plenty of time to make a phone call and find out where that pilot belongs. Who knows, that far away controller may be trying to call this pilot to issue a much-needed clearance.

Controllers: How about "affirmative, this is Boston Center, who is calling?"

I've been guilty of responding with a "depends, who are you?" Not exactly the most professional (see above), but my point is made.

Every transmission should have a purpose. "'still there?' 'Yup'" does not qualify as productive use of frequency.

Thank you.

till next time....

DM

PS. Yes, there are crazy, stupid things going on in the world, and I am intentionally ignoring them. It takes more effort that I can muster some days to focus on the task at hand, but I'm trying. I'm sure a few bloggers listed under adjacent sectors have answers to other questions you may have. For now, I'm still here...mostly.

Missing my Train

2011-03-08T14:05:00.018-05:00

I've been traveling a lot lately, and work has been primarily focused on being an on-the-job-instructor. Its been quite the effort training my favorite trainee. He's come a long way; a few years ago, he was just a faithful reader of this blog, never imagining that he'd ever be assigned to my area. Now he's almost certified on all of his D-sides. So, other than that, there hasn't been much to write about.

Last week, though, I took a trip down to NYC on the train to visit my cousin and take a much anticipated tour of JFK Tower. The plan was to leave Sunday morning and come back Monday night. What was supposed to be 1-3 inches of snow overnight Saturday into Sunday turned out to be more like 1-3 inches an hour for a few hours. I managed to pull myself out of bed a little earlier than my dreary eyes would have cared for, and hit the road, bound for the train station about an hour away. The plows were not up that early, apparently, as I found myself driving 30-40 mph among a few early-bird tire tracks. By the time I was half way there, almost an hour had passed. I knew that there was another train about an hour later, but changing to that train would be more expensive. At this point, I was in a slow, single-file line, with plenty of fresh, powdery snow on either side of the trail the cars had created. I felt like I could drive a little faster and be OK in the lane I was in, but in shin-deep snow? I could probably make it. I have all wheel drive. Heck, I could maybe even make my train if I pushed it. But, I didn't push it. I accepted that I was much safer in the lane I was in, at the speed I was currently traveling. It might cost a little extra, and take more time, if I missed my train, but if I wrecked my car on the highway, my perspective would change drastically. Car repairs, injuries to myself and maybe others around me, and increased insurance premiums would make the extra hour, and costing about 35 dollars extra, seem rather petty. And so, in about three seconds of actual thought process, I made the simple decision to drive slower, keep my tires on concrete, and get to the station in one piece.

This is the same decision all air traffic controllers make about 10,000 times a day. Safety wins every time. Delaying aircraft costs time and money, we know that. But the alternative isn't really worth it for anyone, and it gets taken for granted. What are the chances that I would have crashed my car? If there was a remote chance, than I chose otherwise. Getting to NYC late is WAY better than never getting there. All the airplanes landing late is better than 99.9 percent of them landing on time and losing the other .1 percent. Although, what are the chances of you, or someone you know, being on that .1 percent of flights that never land at an airport intact? You don't have to answer that.

I'll just keep doing what I do best, and you just keep getting on airplanes and getting where you need to go in one piece. Deal.

Oh, so about JFK:

It was hazy, but there were lots of big airplanes.

Thanks to all the JFK controllers who let me hang out with them for half the afternoon! And thanks also for guiding me through the crawl space so I could get out onto the roof (of the administration wing that sticks out of the tower) to take these pics!

PS. A few miles after I decided there was no point in dangerously rushing to get to the train station, I reached the point where it had only been raining, and so we all could speed up and I got to the station with 2 minutes to spare! Lesson is the same. Safety first!

Till next time....

DM

Marginally Famous

2011-01-27T10:42:00.002-05:00

It keeps snowing during my middle-of-the-week night shifts. What normally would be the busiest shifts have been the slowest. We're all mostly bored, quite frankly. The worst part is the 9am bang on the door the next day (after trudging home through the snow at 1am) to move my car for parking lot snow removal at my apartment complex. I like patterns, just not this weekly winter weather pattern. I like sleeping after my night shifts.

------

I have never been to the EAA fly in at Oshkosh. So, this year, I am finally going. A bunch of my friends are going to rent a house and we're going to nerd out, airplane style, the entire last weekend of July in Wisconsin. I have been designing some NAS CONFUSION T-shirts to wear when I am there. This way you can recognize me and ask me questions about my little corner of the national airspace system (ZBW Area A). I wore one of my test designs to work yesterday and got mostly compliments. A few confused looks (appropriate), a few "ooohhhh jeeeezzzz", a couple of snarky comments, but mostly good reviews. Most people are dreaming of Florida, or the Carribean, or Hawaii or something when they are brushing the snow off their car. I am thinking about an airport in the Midwest in July. Hmmmmmm. I have issues.

I think my next main post will be a more complete rundown of the ALB sector. Un-deconstructed, if you will, compared to the previous post.

Since I have nothing of note going on in my ATC life, other than airports closed due to snow plows on the runway, I thought I would turn it back to you.
************************************************************************************
Operationally permitting, of course, please send in your best (or worst) photos of winter operations, from the airplane/airport perspective. Sitting at the gate, airplane covered in snow? I'll take it! Climbing out through the tops of the overcast layer. Excellent! How about that 40 ft pile of snow on the edge of the ramp? Take a picture, claim that your bright pink C172 is buried under there. I might even post it here for all to see! You could become marginally famous!

It's time to embrace the winter wonderland. Email me pics (or videos even) to deltamike172@Hotmail.com .

Till next time...

DM

PS. Pictures with captions such as "Kalamazoo in a White Out" may or may not be accepted.

Differently Similar

2010-12-29T00:04:00.010-05:00

I was sitting at Sector 22 (Albany - ALB) all day it seemed. If I wasn't on break, I was at Albany. And when I was at Albany, the same five planes seemed to fly through at the exact same time. Sure, there were a few other planes here and there, but they weren't in the way like these same five over and over.

I've talked about Albany before, but lets go over some basics first.

This is a simplified map of ALB sector. Lets go over some locations.
Each little circle is a VOR:
ALB - Albany, NY
CAM - Cambridge, NY
CTR - Chester, MA
BDL - Bradley (Hartford), CT
PWL - Pawling, NY
EEN - Keene, NH
DNY - Delancey, NY

The ALB sector is surround by 12 other Boston Center sectors, and completely overlays the Albany Approach Control, who owns 10000 feet and below. The northern half of the sector owns 11000 feet up to FL230 (23000 feet), and the southern half owns FL180 up to Fl230.

Sectors:
MPV - Montpelier Sector 52 owns from the ground to FL230.
CON - Concord Sector 37 owns from the ground to FL230.
GDM - Gardner Sector 36 owns from the ground to FL230.
BOSOX - BOSOX sector (named for an intersection used by Boston departures) owns 11000 up to FL230 (mostly).
Sector 20 is the IGN - Kingston Sector which owns FL200 and above (mostly).
Sector 05 (Stewart) and Sector 06 (Pawling) own 7000 up to FL190.
Sectors 23/24 (Hancock and Delancy, in my area discussed previously) owns mostly from the ground to FL270.
Sector 08/09 (Watertown and Utica, also in my area) owns from the ground to FL600.
Sectors 07 (Chester) and 21 (CANAN) are usually combined since they are so small, and they own 11000 to 17000 underneath ALB and parts of BOSOX.
Two Sectors not shown are CAM - Cambridge Sector 39 which owns above the northern half of the ALB sector FL240 and above. ATHENS Sector 38 owns above the southern half of the sector also FL240 and above.

Now that we have our bearings (I hope), lets talk about the airplanes.

Albany works primary flows of traffic that are pretty constant, but also many planes that are simply flying through randomly. The primary flows are EWR (Newark) area arrivals southbound over ALB, LGA (LaGuardia) area arrivals southbound to PWL, pretty much any other airport near New York City descending southbound, MHT (Manchester) arrivals eastbound to EEN, PVD (Providence) and ISP (Islip/Long Island) arrivals eastbound to a point just west of CTR called PONEE and then to BDL, BDL (Hartford) arrivals eastbound from Sector 24 descending into Sector 21, BDL departures over CTR to CAM, and ALB departures going northwest, west and south. The random traffic includes aircraft transitioning to and from the Mid Atlantic states going to northern New England, Montreal traffic, props going to and from the Boston area, Philly traffic going over DNY, and occasional military refueling missions. There is lots of variety. I love the ALB sector!

But out of all of these, there are really only five instances of total conflict, guaranteed. Figure One. Green lines are climbing, Red lines are descending.

ATHENS gives us MHT arrivals descending to FL240. Our job is to descend them to either FL190 or FL210, and hand them off to GDM-Sector 36. The main determining factor in which altitude we assign depends on BDL departures. Most of them fly over CTR and then go to CAM and then westbound to SYR (Syracuse, NY). A few go west over HNK, but the majority fly to CAM, and are almost always in the way of the MHT arrivals. As the BDL departures cross the MHT flow between CTR and CAM, they are usually climbing out of FL190 for FL230. So a decision must be made. Can I outclimb the MHT with the BDL? Or should I stop the BDL at FL200 and stop the MHT at FL210 and wait for them to pass before climbing the departure?

If I stop the BDL departure, I am increasing the chances that that aircraft will be low enough to later conflict with the other major flow in the sector: EWR arrivals.

If I can't climb the BDL departure right away, or they just climb slow anyways, they are usually in the way of the EWR arrivals just west of CAM as they turn towards SYR. The CAM sector will usually tell us to keep them on a northbound heading to go around the back of the EWR traffic, but sometimes they just get stuck underneath. This is bad. EWR traffic is usually cleared to cross ALB at 16000. As strange as it seems, EWR Traffic goes below the BDL arrivals which cross 15 miles south of ALB descending to FL180. Both EWR and BDL traffic are handed off to Sector 21 who then further descends them once they cross.

The BDL traffic is only one reason we are always pushing to EWR jets lower. Another reason are the southbound ALB departures. They come climbing off the airport on a northwest heading. They don't get to turn south until they outclimb the EWR and BDL arrivals, or we can squeeze them into gaps between. This is the best part of the ALB sector, in my opinion. Whether or not you have a three way scare just south of ALB is up to you. We can leave the departure on the northwest heading until they're out of FL190 and then turn them back south, or we can send them west and then circle them around a BDL, or we can crank them south to PWL right away and tell them to climb like they're life depends on it, narrowly cutting in front of a EWR jet. Sometimes we can push the BDL arrival below the EWR, and then we have a few thousand feet less to get clear. Each scenario is different.

And yet, as I spend my whole day at Albany, the fact that I keep getting five planes at the same time is getting really old, really fast. The BDL departure departs, the EWR arrival is handed off to me descending quickly to meet the restriction from CAM sector, I get a departure message for a southbound ALB departure, here comes the MHT arrival turning direct EEN, and lo and behold, a BDL arrival screaming in from the west. It takes me 6 minutes to work it all out, 11 transmissions in total, and I am left with no airplanes for a few minutes. I may work a few stragglers here and there. The JFK-Burlington Jetblue, an Air Canada south to LGA, and/or a northwest ALB departure, but all of them are route separated. But once those are through, I take my five handoffs again and 6 minutes later 500 people are safely on their way.

After three or four instances of this, I start noticing a pattern. And so after my next break, the pattern continues. Five planes, three conflicts, six minutes, eleven transmissions, moving on with my life. The monotony is broken when one of the BDL departures turns left at CTR and heads to Pittsburgh via HNK. He's not in conflict with the MHT (yay!), but now he and the ALB departure are climbing up to Fl230 converging just north of PWL. Sigh. Who's climbing faster? Both are climbing about the same. I analyze it a few seconds more. I turn the ALB departure a little left to go behind the BDL departure and coordinate the change with ATHENS, giving them control to turn him back to PWL when they pass. And then I'm left with nothing. Waiting for my next break, or five airplanes, whichever comes first.

Till next time...

DM

PS. The moral of the story: Manchester arrivals need to land, but it isn't that urgent. So we try to get our Bradley departures as high as we can so we can get our Newarks down quick so we have a chance to get our Bradley arrivals down and our Albany departures up and on course.

PPS. We also have a pretty nasty conflict at FL210 just west of CTR. It usually involves New York Metro departures at FL210 going to Burlington or Montreal and the PVD/ISP flow descending to FL190 to BDL. If the BDL departure is going over CTR to HNK, plus throw in a LGA arrival southbound to make you reconsider vectoring someone to the west, and BOSOX has a plane climbing a little higher that departed PVD westbound to HNK, it can get ugly, in a multidimensional way. But this happens maybe once or twice a day at the most, not four or five times an hour. So I didn't include this :) Oh wait, I just did!

Where have I been?

2010-12-03T01:11:00.003-05:00

Everywhere and Nowhere.

My focus has been on everything except this blog. That is just how it has to be sometimes. I have a post or two patiently perched in the pending bay, so stay tuned. I just have to work on some of my awesome Windows Paint diagrams!

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A few days after my "operational error", the subject of my last post (the whole thing is printed up and tacked up to the wall in my area at work, by the way, and I am asked "are you in a groove?" on a daily basis, still), one of the controllers in my area had a medical issue (not at work) which caused him to spend a few days in the hospital. When he was released, he stopped by work to find out the status of his medical certificate. He looked fantastic and well rested. It made me think about the working conditions we subject ourselves to. It made me think about spending the next 20 or more years of my life working in an environment in which having a heart attack and spending a few days in the hospital is an improvement.

So that is where I have been: Pondering the meaning of life and where ATC fits into mine. I have determined that I will never find another job that I truly love 95 percent of the time, even if it kills me slowly. The schedule is crazy, and yet, I would never want a daily morning commute. It is occasionally stressful, yes, and constantly rewarding. For someone who strives to learn something new everyday, I'd say I've got enough to learn about the NAS to last me a lifetime.

Yup, I'm still here. And I'm in a groove.

Till next time...

DM

PS. The medically disqualified controller is helping with training in the simulators. I hope to take advantage of that by spending some time working fake traffic with strips just like the good old days that I barely knew as an A-side the first few weeks after I arrived at Boston Center. No, really. I'm a nerd.

In a Groove.

2010-10-11T10:28:00.002-05:00

I returned home from my lovely vacation to a cloudy, rain soaked New Hampshire. It was really a nice change of pace from the hot and humid that had been going on since...I can't remember. I prefer cool weather, so I can't complain. At work, the few windows that we do have (in the break room and cafeteria) have been boarded up for replacement. The boarding up is to keep the threat of asbestos out of our lungs. The lack of natural sunlight during the day is making my internal clock spin out of control.

And yet, despite my seemingly weird sleep cycle, I rolled into work on Wednesday afternoon in a really good mood, and wide awake. Someone important was visiting NY (shocker) and so they drew a big circle on the map around Him/Her, and we couldn't let planes go in there. This increased our traffic significantly, as many of the planes destined for TEB were flying to HPN.

The higher levels of traffic had my interest piqued, and I was actually skipping breaks, enjoying the complexity of spacing and Metering and the occasional weather deviation. I was having fun; fun makes the day go by faster.

At the DNY/HNK sector around 6pm, the traffic picked up, and to all the right places. I had 5 or 6 Newark inbounds, some with Metering delays, some without. I got 4 White Plains arrivals from the sector above me. They were all 15 miles in trail, as required due to the higher traffic volume, but the guy from the southwest, being handed off to me from New York, was going to end up tied with one of the 4 planes from up high. There were a few Hartford area arrivals, an Albany arrival, a LaGuardia prop and two props coming in from the east, head on with everyone else and slow. One was just an overflight going to the southwest, the other was a Sidney, NY arrival. The overflight might get in the way of my White Plains arrivals and the Sidney arrival needed to get down but the LGA prop was in its way.

While I was enjoying myself, in a strange state of euphoria, I was provided a 3rd set of eyes at the sector, called a Tracker. My tracker plugs in and monitors the frequency, answers some landline calls, and basically just keeps an eye on me. He was standing a few feet behind me, with a much better wide angle view of everything going on in my sector. That different perspective can be invaluable.

I got control from the sector that gave me the Sidney arrival and turned him to the right, to go behind the LGA prop. I had just turned three of my White Plains arrivals out to the north to allow room for the one from the southwest to fit in behind the first one. I was descending two Newark jets quickly so I could get those White Plains guys down under my westbound overflight. After a few minutes of constant chatter on the frequency, I had 15 miles in trail to White Plains with speeds matched up as they descended, and all my Newark arrivals were nicely spaced flying 280 knots at FL190. Luckily I didn't have any Philly arrivals to cut across and spoil my best laid plans.

With two nice strings of traffic all spaced out, there wasn't much to do except get my Sidney lander landed and the other airplanes switched to their next frequency. So my tracker left and moved on to get someone a break. As it turns out, it was my break. "Neh, I'll skip, I'm in a groove". I got the necessary arrival information from the Sidney lander and cleared him direct to the initial fix on his requested approach. This turned him back to the left, bringing him back in conflict with the LGA prop. I took two more Newark handoffs and formulated a plan for sequence, included the fact that I couldn't let one of them get in the way of another White Plains I had coming in from the high sector. I overheard the possibility that my last two Newarks may have to go in the hold, since the VIP in NY was clogging up the works. I scanned my traffic and came up with a simple backup plan if the next sector didn't take the tail end of my Newark flow. As I finished my scan, I saw my Sidney arrival, still at 16000 feet, getting closer and closer to his destination. A quick descent would be required from there, I thought, and issued the clearance to 7000. Then I turned that westbound overflight to the left to miss a White Plains descending, turned my new Newark to the right for a Metering delay and to allow my next White Plains a chance to get down, as well. Why hadn't I started the Sidney guy down sooner, I thought? And then my D-side realizes why. He's converging with the LGA prop. Oh, this is bad. My euphoria has expired. I issue a turn back to the north for the Sidney arrival. I don't know how much room I have there, not much. A few miles, at the most? I call traffic to the LGA prop, maybe he'll see him, hopefully! I say 11 oclock and five miles at your same altitude, but I'm pretty sure I'm lying about the distance, it must be more like three. I want to turn him away too, but I'm having a moment. I can't breathe. It didn't come out. They're not going to hit, but, F%#$, I'm having a deal. The LGA prop has him on TCAS (and he totally realizes I screwed up, I can hear it in his voice), but he doesn't actually see him out the window. I turn him right to a southbound heading. Why did I pass a break? Oh, I was having fun, that's right. I get a break now. And then I sit and wait for the higher ups to review the tapes and determine how bad it really was. My D-side joins me in the union office. We get to watch Roy Halliday's no-hitter. At least my planes didn't hit, either. A few hours later, we're called back to be interviewed.

As it turns out, a little over 4 miles and a few hundred feet was as close as they got. I misjudged 5 miles. When I called traffic, I still had 6.5 miles. I should have turned or climbed the LGA prop right away. I could have prevented all of this. They were both moving so slow. I had time to save it. I just didn't realize it at the time.

Upon further review, the Sidney guy didn't start down right away, and not very quickly. The conflict alert didn't go off until I actually lost separation. That is because the two planes were so slow and the computer only looks two minutes out. It was not even technically a "deal". It was classified as a "proximity event". A proximity event is just a euphemism for "I screwed up, but not bad enough for the FAA to go public with it." But none of that matters to me. Call it what you want. I should have started the Sidney guy down 5 minutes ago. I don't know why I didn't. Maybe I needed to learn a lesson. Take a tracker, keep your tracker, and go on break. Stay vigilant.

Consider it experience. Silver linings are always good. And if the worst that happens to me is having a proximity event every 5 years, than I'll have a career I can be proud of. For now, the controllers in my area are giving me a boatload of hell for being "in a groove". I deserve it all.

Till next time...

DM

WTF.

2010-09-07T23:24:00.009-05:00

These two planes crossed paths. One of them deviated northbound and the other southbound west of Burlington. I still don't get it. They seemed to fly through the worst of what was depicted on radar only to bail out and fly around the eastern edge of the storms....

It was nice and sunny, with a smooth ride, in the chair from which I was observing.

Oh, and the Traffic Management Unit insisted the weather wasn't affecting our sector. Nope, not at all.

Till next time,

DM

PS. And as always, thanks for www.flightaware.com for allowing us to relive the glory that was a Tuesday evening.

Out of Range

2010-09-03T09:23:00.012-05:00

Last weekend was pretty good, overall. It was hot out, and a little humid, as I rolled into work on Tuesday (aka, Monday for me). I left the sunshine and my body prepared for the shock of the cold, dark control floor. It always seems colder inside when its hot outside. I make a mental note to grab my hoodie on my next break (yes, I made sure to bring it with me even though it was 96 outside).

The next shock to my system was the chaos that immediately ensued at the UCA/ART sector, my first session of the work-week.

The sector was busy with normal westbound traffic climbing towards Syracuse VOR. I had a big spacing requirement to IAD (40 Miles-in-trail), and lo and behold, I have a few of them coming from different directions with different headwinds.

The military is out in force today. They had taken some time off, as far as our airspace is concerned, and there are new flights that I've never seen before out of Maryland. They are using a small block of airspace called "Range 1", but only from 23000' and below, so it's not a big deal. Depending on the mission, the military uses different areas of airspace so they can fly training missions safely separated from IFR traffic and off our frequency. The schedule calls for another training flight to show up from BAF in Massachusetts soon, and they are requesting "Viper All", which encompasses a huge portion of my airspace, as well as a small part of Montpelier Sector. They generally request 8000' to 50000', with some western parts of that all the way down to the ground. When that happens, I need to get EVERYONE else out of there before the fighter jets can be cleared in so they can accomplish their training in sterile airspace.

The traffic along J547 is pretty steady, but increasing by the minute. I am getting alot of traffic from Canada going to IAD, and I need to figure out my sequence. As a big gaggle of planes at various altitudes enters my airspace from the east, I see the MURDER2 flight (all military callsigns will be altered slightly to protect the innocent) from BAF coming to request Viper All airspace. They can't have it until the Range 1 block is empty since the airspace overlaps and the training mission involved there is not associated with them. The MURDER2 flight is in a block altitude from Fl220 to FL240. An Albany departure comes off assigned an altitude just below them. It's a Southwest climbing fast to FL210, looking for Fl380. I take both handoffs begrudgingly.

The westbound flow includes a lot of traffic at FL300 today. All the IAD traffic going south needs to be at FL300 or below. This is going to be a problem. The Ottawa to Dulles flight is handed off to us from Montreal Centre, climbing to FL280 only. I think he'll stay there for a while, he wants FL320. The MURDER2 flight checks in requesting the VIPER ALL airspace. "Unable at this time, RANGE 1 is still active for a few more minutes" "Roger".

Normally, when our military flights show up to use our airspace, they file a full flight plan to and from the set of airspace, or blocks, that they want, incorporating a delay message in their flight plan so we can just clear them on their way when they are done "as previously cleared". These new guys using the Range 1 didn't do that.

"HORSE3 flight requesting IFR clearance." A few planes were checking in on other frequencies, but that caught my ear. It takes a few moments to realize that this HORSE flight is coming out of the RANGE 1 block and wants an IFR clearance to Maryland. However, they are in Wheeler Sack Approach's airspace. We call them and get control, and I clear HORSE3 on the preferred route and allow them to climb to 16000. I ask them if the Range 1 is cold/inactive now that they are done, they reply with a "we're not sure, I think there are more planes in there." My D-side is typing fast and furious getting the HORSE3 flightplan in the computer. I take a quick scan of the rest of my traffic and come up with a plan. The first Dulles is actually from the northeast, so I'll leave him at FL320 (I tell RKA what to expect and give them control reference my traffic) and go over the top of my westbound traffic. The second one gets slowed down, but I climb him to FL300. I take a YYZ arrival that is crossing with the second IAD guy and take him down from FL300 to FL280. I turn another guy at FL300 20 degrees right (missing the IAD guys and getting him out of the way of the ALB departure) and turn the Albany departure a little left and push him up above everyone. A shortcut and higher, bonus! I switch a plane or two to Cleveland Center and I get interrupted by MURDER2 reminding me that they are about to enter the Viper All airspace. The first Dulles is stll in the airspace MURDER2 is requesting, along with a pointout from Sector 53 going to Seattle and a Saranac Lake arrival at 17000 descending. I tell the MURDER2 to enter the VIPER ALL airspace but stay in their limited block altitude for now.

My D-side is calling the sectors around us to turn planes away from the Viper All so we can use it soon. The necessary coordination requires about 8 phone calls. The HORSE3 flight is clear of my Saranac arrival and so I issue a climb to the requested FL200 and I flash the handoff to the next sector. A canadian aircraft that is clearly from Quebec tries calling me for VFR advisories. "Unable VFR at this time" I respond. Yet, another VFR calls me....

BIRCH5 calls requesting a pop-up IFR clearance as well, this time to BAF to the southeast. "Did you file an IFR flight plan" "Affirmative" "Roger, maintain VFR while I pull up your flight plan". My D-side and I are frantically searching the computer for the flight plan, but find nothing. I switch a few planes while my D-side looking into the situation.

HORSE3 calls. "We're encountering IMC conditions, we need to split up and become two flights."

"Roger, are you with HORSE4, same flight plan?"

"Affirm"

HORSE3/4 is about 12 miles north of SYR, which, at FL200, is where 3 Centers meet. The coordination on this could get hairy. I get DNY sector to flash the handoff back to me (luckily New York Center hadn't taken the handoff from them yet), and in a split second I decide to turn the HORSE flight to a 330 heading, keeping them in my airspace. I pull up a code for the new HORSE4 flight plan and have that plane come up on my frequency when he's ready.

Sector 39 calls for a few handoffs on the other side of my scope and I, again, begrudgingly say "radar contact," followed by a few clicks on the datablocks to take the handoff. MURDER2 is entering the Viper all now, and he reminds me of it, again. Yah, yah. I'm working on it.

"MURDER2, standby. Is BIRCH flight still on frequency?"

"Affirm, center, VFR at 9500 requesting IFR to BAF."

"Are you clear of the Range1 and if so, is it cold?"

"BIRCH is clear, we're the last ones out, the Range is cold"

"Roger, standby for IFR."

"MURDER2 can you take the Viper All from 11000 up to FL290 for now(?), I have traffic still in there for a few minutes."

"We'll take whatever you can give us..."

"Roger, MURDER2 is cleared into the Viper All airspace 11000 up to FL290, Wheeler Sack altimeter 30.02, frequency change approved, monitor Guard for the rest of the block in 10 minutes."

"Roger, switching MURDER2."

"HORSE3 what is HORSE4's requested altitude?"

"We'll both take FL200, but we, HORSE3, will take a vector to follow in-trail if that works for you."

"Roger, HORSE3, have HORSE4 come up on my frequency heading 090, HORSE3 fly heading 360."

I see the HORSE4 pop up, I issue the clearance and HORSE4 turns back to SYR to fly the preferred route to Maryland. Once I get about 8 miles, I turn HORSE3 back to SYR and he resumes the route as before.

Now, about this BIRCH flight. My D-side is finishing up the flight plan for the HORSE4, changing HORSE3 to a flight of 1....Dude, where is the flight plan for BIRCH!? I turn one of my IAD guys eastbound for spacing. I expedite another Albany departure above him, and tell a few planes that shortcuts aren't available and the rides are probably bumpy. Cleveland gives me a BTV arrival going direct (straight through the Viper), so I call them quickly to get control to turn him around the Viper airspace to the south. I'll somehow have to get that guy down to FL190 through all my westbound traffic climbing. I turn my Dulles back on course and assign a speed.

Five minutes later, everyone is clear of the Viper airspace. I got the Saranac Lake guy down and handed him off to Sector 52, the Dulles guys are all clear and on their way, mostly spaced, and any other stragglers have moved on. I tell the BIRCH to contact Albany approach and request IFR with them, since they aren't in my airspace anymore. I call MURDER2 and clear them into the whole block as they requested, thanking them for their patience.

Our usable airspace has gone from a big rounded square to more of an L shape, but I have all the same planes, and they all have to climb and descend. I feel squeezed when Viper All is active.

Lets take a look at my lame excuses for a visual aid:

The ART/UCA sector is in the middle, within the bold black lines. Other sectors are shown as thin black lines. Green lines are flights that are en-route and mostly in level flight. Blue lines are climbing aircraft, and red lines are descending aircraft.

The first pic is how the sector started off, with just Range 1, in red, 23000' and below. This is mostly a normal flow for this sector. While there are always flows that climb and descend head on with each other, we have plenty of room to turn guys out a little to keep them laterally separated.

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The second pic shows the Viper All in red, taking up my entire northeastern quadrant of airspace. I am left with but a sliver of an L, and all the climbing and descending and level aircraft are compressed within that L, in conflict with each other. There is little, if not no, room for error. Ottawa departures are head on with Ottawa and Montreal Arrivals, Burlington Arrivals are head on with Burlington and Montreal Departures. And brace for impact if there is ever a RUT or GFL arrival in there or something. They usually come from Cleveland Center at FL410 and need to go down to 11000. Yeah....

As I take a break, all I can do is vow to do better next time. And I need to remember to bring my whole brain to work next Monday, I mean Tuesday....

Till next time...

DM

Get 'um down!

2010-07-25T12:19:00.015-05:00

Altitude is the most basic form of separation in the 3D world of Air Traffic. It doesn't require radar, and is often the most efficient way to keep two airplanes from colliding. However, aircraft eventually run low on gas and want to land. How do we safely allow planes to descend through the maze of other traffic and what considerations are necessary to accomplish this? It's funny you should ask...

Compression

The wind is in effect 24/7. In general, aircraft with a headwind climb, descend and turn faster relative to the ground, because they are moving over the ground slower than the aircraft with a tailwind, who fly faster, but climb, descend and turn relatively slower.

In the en-route world, the winds vary greatly at altitude, and this causes aircraft with a higher tailwind component to fly faster, when assigned the same speed, as aircraft with less of a tailwind. Wind tends to be stronger at higher altitudes. Thus, as aircraft descend into the airport, the first airplane will be at a lower altitude first, with less of a tailwind then the aircraft following it down from behind. Even though they will be at the same altitude at the same point in space, the trailing aircraft are higher relative to the current time. So, if you have 2 identical aircraft at FL270, 6 miles in trail, and both are assigned 300 knots, the first aircraft will start down 6 miles (or about 1 minute)before the second one wants to. The first plane will already be one or two thousand feet lower than the back one until a minute after the first one levels at the lower assigned altitude. However, the first aircraft will gradually lose part of the tailwind sooner than the back aircraft, causing the front plane to slow down relative to the ground and the plane following. This is called compression. We need 5 miles, and your 1 mile buffer you had at FL270 will cease to exist by the time they're both down to FL180.

The vast majority of descending aircraft in my area flow eastbound, so they almost always have this tailwind compression issue. The compression for westbound traffic and headwinds is less of an issue (there would still be some compression due to the thinner air aloft), but I don't have any extensive experience with lines of aircraft doing this. This is my blog, so we'll stick with what I'm familiar with.

There are a few techniques controllers use to prevent this from happening. The first solution is the assign the back aircraft a speed at least 20 knots slower than the front aircraft. The first plane would be assigned 310 knots or greater, the second 290 knots, the third 270 knots, and the fourth would be assigned 250 knots. As they reached their lower assigned altitude they would then be reassigned 310 knots to keep up with the first guy.

We can't assign slower than 250 knots, so we'd have to vector any other planes out to allow room for the compression to happen. Often times, we'll vector everyone a little, except the first one, of course, just keep the speeds up with about 10-15 miles in trail. This would depend on the difference in wind speed at the starting and ending altitudes.

In other cases, aircraft will approach the crossing point from different angles. This is effectively the same issue, since one aircraft will have more of a tailwind component than the other. We will either assign different speeds in attempt to keep them matched up, or we can vector the back airplane more towards the route of the first one so they both have similar tailwinds.

Another common solution is starting the back aircraft down first, or assigning a restriction that keeps both aircraft at the same altitude at the same time. And that brings us to our next chapter.

Restrictions

There are a bunch of ways we instruct aircraft to descend. Some require the pilot to descend immediately after accepting the clearance, while others allow the pilot some discretion. A few techniques are actually not totally "legal", but we'll get into that.

The following sequence will assume the same situation depicted above. The aircraft on the left is at FL270, and is the aircraft we will be communicating with. Our standard traffic flow requires the plane to enter the next sector (which is just to the right of the VOR) at FL180. Any subsequent aircraft shown, (such as the aircraft to the right of the VOR) are considered traffic in that airspace, but that traffic isn't moving, per se. There will be a plane there when our plane gets there. We better have altitude separation, if you know what I'm saying...

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The most basic clearance is "Descend and maintain FL180." The aircraft will descend at a "normal" rate, which varies greatly. Some will descend at 500 feet per minute (fpm), most will use 1000fpm, but others will descend as much at 3000fpm. Controllers tend to expect 1000fpm. Since this clearance is unpredictable, this would not be a good clearance in this situation, as you can see below.

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The best, and most common, clearance would be "cross VOR at FL180." This is called a pilot's discretion descent. The pilot could maintain FL270 (with a nice tailwind and thin air, very fuel efficient) as long as he/she would like and then descend rapidly using idle thrust. Or, the plane could start down early if they were in turbulence. It is up to them.

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Now lets say there is traffic crossing in front of the VOR at FL270 as well. We can't let the plane stay at FL270 as long as it would like, but we don't need the plane going all the way down yet, either. "Descend now to FL260, then cross VOR at FL180" This tells the pilot to start down to FL260 right away, but then they have discretion to cross the VOR at FL180 as before.

----

Another common occurrence is to issue minimum descent rates to planes. This is often used when there isn't a convenient place to issue a crossing restriction, or when there are multiple airplanes in the way and we just need to get the plane going down quick. "Descend and maintain FL180, descend at 2000fpm or greater through FL190". This is NOT included as an approved way to ensure separation according to our rule book, and so, we are taking our careers in our own hands when we use this. When issuing this type of clearance, we have to watch very carefully to make sure that the plane will still be OK, as opposed to a crossing restriction which we can assume will work. Nothing a hard left turn wouldn't fix! And that isn't to say we don't keep an eye on planes with crossing restrictions....

My personal preference is to use descent rates when there isn't really anyone in the way, but a fast rate of descent would benefit me in other ways, such as preventing compression or if other future descent clearances to other aircraft are predicated upon the first plane getting out of the way.

Also, starting an airplane down early, faster than normal, may only serve to over-restrict the airplane and cause it to burn more fuel.

When there is specific traffic involved, I prefer a slightly less illegal "descend to reach FL180 in 3 minutes or less". I say "less illegal" because the correct way is to say "descend to reach FL180 at or before 1323 zulu, time now 1320 zulu." I hope to get some brownie points by using half correct phraseology (descend to reach FL180), I just don't give an exact time or a time check. They both mean the same thing, but the legal way is MUCH more confusing and time consuming. I don't care what time it is, just hit your stop watch and be level in 3 minutes please. Again, if I use a descent rate or don't use the time check appropriately, I need to keep an eye on it, have a good backup plan (vectors mostly), and hope I don't lose my radios. I could always just assign a different altitude that is safe. Yeah. That's a good idea too.

----

Speaking of confusing, lets change the traffic a little. Also, assume we don't need the airplane AT FL180 for the next sector, just descending to FL180.

In one fell swoop, we can issue "descend now to FL250, cross VOR at or below FL210, descend and maintain FL180". If you get a good readback the first time around, tip your hat to the pilots, especially if they're in the middle of their descent briefing or trying to copy down the ATIS on the other radio. Perhaps "descend at least 2000fpm for traffic" would be better after all....

Also, many pilots forget that they DO NOT have pilots discretion after the VOR, and they often level at FL210 until prompted by us to continue down.

----

You'll notice how I always have the blue "idle" line up there. That is the ideal descent rate for the aircraft based on the weight of the aircraft, the winds aloft, the speed being flown, temperature, and countless other factors, I'm sure. That blue line, obviously, is never the same for each plane and the time of day, etc. We don't know what it is. But we've grown accustomed to aircraft descending quite rapidly into their restrictions. I've seen up to 7000fpm. That would mean that a plane that is a little more than 1 minute from the VOR can still make the crossing restriction. Excellent. Every once in a while (and more often recently, it seems), something goes astray and they don't make it. And by the time the pilots realize they aren't going to make it, it is too late. They're descending too fast to stop the descent for other traffic, and they're too close to the VOR to turn them out a little and give them more room.

I assume the main reason for this error is when the wind at lower altitudes is stronger than the pilots/flight computers expect. The ideal profile gets pushed out a little at the lower altitudes and thus they miss the restriction. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about this as a controller except be extra cautious and start giving "cross 5 miles west of VOR at FL180" to give them a buffer. Yet that is what I gave the trailing plane to prevent compression! So much for that.

Descending on idle thrust also prevents us from issuing a speed adjustment until the plane is level if we want them to make the altitude crossing restriction. This isn't a big issue as long as you've given yourself enough room for compression.

----

Its very annoying when I see a plane approach their restriction, still at their original altitude, and when challenged "verify you will cross VOR at FL180?", they respond "affirmative, we'll make it, we're starting down now" and then they miss it by ALOT. That happened to me more than twice last week. Did I mention its annoying. Perhaps unsafe?

I could recommend that pilots stop descending so fast. I could claim the problem is greed in the airline industry trying to save money in an unsafe manner. But in some situations when we, as controllers, get busy and can't give the crossing restriction until the last minute, the pilots drop the anchor and make us look good.

I guess I just want to know when you can't make your restriction...in time to do something about it. Thank you.

Till next time,

DM

Time Flies - Low Fares!

2010-07-12T16:45:00.019-05:00

It's not that I haven't had anything to blog about. I just haven't gotten around to it. Life has been pretty good, as of late. Sorry, I must be away from the computer!

A little recap while I was gone. I went on a nice long road trip on my vacation about a month ago. I started out in Minneapolis.

After two days of baseball and mild offense to the Delta invasion at the airport, I moved on to Houston. It was hot, humid, and I saw some baseball there, too. But the highlight was definitely the time I spent with my buddy Josh "flying" an E145 simulator. A few pics and a video:

Then off to Denver, with the highlights of driving through the middle of nowhere....

Oh, and then I stopped in North Platte and watched some trains...

Yup, I just put up a bunch of pics from a rail yard.

--------

Since I've been back, work has had its ups and downs. I've been outlining a new post about descent clearances, though it keeps growing on me. Couple that with a few related incidences that frustrated me last week and I've decided to take some more time with it. For now, I'll just leave you with the visuals above.

Till next time...

DM

The Upgrade!

2010-05-20T22:41:00.008-05:00

It was a dream come true.

After countless years flying small, propeller driven aircraft, it was finally time to become a "real" pilot. The steam gauges of all those slow, aging, oil-stained workhorses would be a distant memory.

Granted, there wouldn't be any coveted left-seat flying for a while. The Upgrade was more in the form of pay and machine than status, per se. But that damned BDL or MHT turn would be history. Thank God for that. He wouldn't have to deal with the trouble of being kept low, in the clouds, while those jet-jockeys made smooth, sweet contrails high in the flight levels.

This was it. Even the cliche "the sky is the limit" seemed romantic at this point.

And so, ground school began in earnest deep within a large building next to the Toronto Pearson airport. The book work was menial but clearly necessary for such an amazingly complex airplane. The hours spent in the E175 full motion simulator tested the mettle of all those being tested. And after countless fake emergencies, gradually improved procedural efficiency, and a few moments of tearful doubt, it was time to fly.

The preflight was complete, the flight plan was loaded into the flight management computer with slightly trembling fingertips, and the speeds were calculated...

Mach .62!? "What is that, like 230 knots at Fl310?" A nod from the captain.
"Not much faster than that ole' Beech 1900 you came from, eh?"

"Well, the tailwind will help...and the true airspeed isn't exactly the same, but...." There is an urge to increase that Cost Index above.....what was it again? Do we even have one?

"Gotta save the gas somehow. How else can we stand a chance of making money?"

"That's pretty lame, I must admit."

Meanwhile, the company check airman, sitting in the jump seat, monitoring the first week or so of real line-pilot action, is pretending not to listen...

"Company only lets us speed up if ATC asks us to go faster. As you can imagine, they have trouble sequencing us at that speed....then we call dispatch and let them know."

"Wow....they wouldn't notice if we just bumped it up a notch, would they? To, say, something a little more jet-like?"

"....You've got a lot to learn, kid." He and the check airman chuckles.

Time to get this show on the road.

Till next time, which may be a few weeks....

DM

For better or worse

2010-05-02T20:28:00.004-05:00

I love my job, and try to come to work everyday to enthusiastically do a better job than I did yesterday. At some point I'll get old and stop caring, but that is a long way over a distant horizon.

So with that in mind, I offer an example of why I can't wait to go to work and be productive and safe and make a difference, followed by another example of why I'm still learning (aka "young and stupid"):

The rides have been decent in my area lately, even with some cold fronts moving through. Lots of clouds and rain, but not much else to cause a stir. The altimeters have been low for weeks on end, and not having FL180 available gets tiring sometimes at the low sectors...especially when an aerial photo mission wants a block altitude from FL180-FL200 and my sector doesn't own 17000. Seriously, you can't have it.

So, I was enjoying my time at the RKA sector the other morning as the first wave of eastbound arrivals showed up around 8am. A regional jet checked in at FL350, with the standard "light chop, got anything better?"

Earlier, all the westbound departure traffic found nothing but light chop at all the westbound altitudes, so I reported that chop was everywhere today. As a few more planes showed up, I asked around, found nothing better as far as rides were concerned, but offered a lower altitude which would become available once I descended a BDL arrival.

"Descend and maintain FL290, if you like FL330 or 310, let me know, you can keep it."

Three minutes later, the RJ levels at FL310 and happily reports it to be smooth as glass. "Roger, maintain FL310."

A half hour later, most of my planes are crowding up FL310, but I'm happy that they're in smooth air not complaining too much. One of the few jets not at FL310 is an BOS bound MD-80 who hears the other reports with envy. I turn him out a little to the south to get him down to FL310 as well, paralleling some MHT and PWM traffic.

My effort is rewarded with the heartfelt, southern twang of appreciation. "Thanks, son, this is the first good ride we've had since we departed Dallas three hours back."

-------

Later in the day, I'm back at RKA sector yet again. The rides have improved dramatically below FL320 and above FL370. Area B is short cutting alot of westbound traffic into my sector, and they are, remarkably, all below FL320 and above FL380. Some of these short cuts are given to MDW traffic, which I shake my head at since there is in-trail spacing to MDW.

The first two jets are at FL380 and holding steady at Mach .78. The sector to my north gives their MDW a short vector to the north to get the 20 miles we need, and then goes direct Jamestown, NY to follow mine. This MDW, however, is at FL320, which, as I've just noticed, has 60 knots less headwind than FL380. There is no assignable speed that will keep him 20 miles behind my two MDWs for long.

After giving this third MDW the same shortcut I mentally scolded Area B for issuing, I am now slowing this guy waaaaay down to Mach .70, and there is still an overtake. Sigh. I call Cleveland and beg for forgiveness and I get a chuckle and a "no problem" after giving them control to fix my mistake in my airspace. Luckily, Ithaca is a long way from MDW, so it's not the end of the world.

I'll try to do better next time.

Till then....

DM

NAS Confucius

2010-04-04T21:46:00.005-05:00

I won't claim to be an expert in the ways of Chinese culture, current or historical, but I don't see anything wrong with learning something new and applying its lessons to your own context. I've been enjoying some audio Chinese history lessons during my commute to work, and couldn't help but indulge you in some of my own perspective.

Confucius' ideas have been passed down by his students for centuries, and his ideas on ethics form an ideal that is optimistic and visionary for the human race. He believed that there was a good, moral, responsible way to treat other people, especially directed from those with power towards those without it. Also, there were "right" and "wrong" actions, and those that were considered "right" were to be pursued and carried out for the good of all. In conjunction with common thinking of the time, any bold action that failed was deemed to be "wrong." And that "wrongness" came straight from the heavens. Any successful conquest was hailed as a sign from above that all was "right."

On the flip side, Taoism emerged around the same time period as the contradictory belief system, emphasizing "inaction" instead of an arrogant "we are right in our actions" approach. While most air traffic controllers are all for improvements to the NAS, we tend to (and I think we should) take a Taoist approach. The Taoists assume that since humans can never be completely knowledgeable about a particular topic, we have no business making bold changes to our lives and the world, in that we could never fully ponder the consequences. This is not to say we should take "inaction" instead of turning or climbing a plane for other traffic. Inaction, in this case, should be taken, or not taken, on a systemic scale.

That is essentially what this blog is about. The National Airspace System is so extremely complex, no one can fathom how it all interacts with itself. Even a controller who was very familiar with their own airspace and moving airplanes through it could never carry that same expert perspective about another facilities airspace, or how the automation works at a computer code level, or how to forecast the weather for tomorrow's North Atlantic tracks. Even as an expert in just your or my airspace, slight changes can have profound effects on surrounding traffic that we could never predict until it happens. That is one of the aspects of thunderstorm season that is so mindblowingly complicated.

Luckily, once change happens, humans have the ability to learn about the quirks of their new environment. However, this often comes at the price of incorrect action the first (and maybe second or third) time around. Due to this heightened potential for mistake, changes should be taken very seriously when applied to our ATC system. Safety can be compromised. Even if the FAA claims otherwise.

I know the NAS has to change over the course of my career. It already has in the 4 brief years that I've been at Boston Center. But let us not change for the sake of change. Especially if someone not intimately familiar with our system says we should. For example, the bean counters at Continental Airlines wish they could keep their international arrivals higher over ALB to save fuel. I'd be all for that to help out the economy, etc etc. So, I've thought about it. Alot. As have others in my area. I won't go into too much detail, but suffice to say, any adequate solution to this problem (in the eyes of COA) would most likely require us descending BDL arrivals lower than they are today (and then they would complain about not being able to stay high anymore), which would affect sectors in Cleveland Center that I don't even know the name of (whatever is west of the DSV sector), because they would have to get their BDL traffic under the HPN traffic, something they don't currently have to do. Since we'd be cutting off a way up J6 for ALB departure traffic, we'd have to tell ALB Tower to turn their departures to the east, instead of the west, affecting their split configuration. This would also affect our V487 northbound traffic, our PVD/ISP arrivals, the BDL departures also, and then who knows what in the ATHENS and IGN sectors above me. Again, I can't even fathom what else that would effect, some positively, and some negatively. That is just to let the EWR arrivals stay 6000 feet higher for 20 miles. Imagine the consequences of redesigning an entire approach control, or the whole midwest, or the east coast of the US, or replacing the computer that runs everything.

Well, 2500 years ago, the Taoists would have told you, "that will create problems that no human could possibly ever imagine". Luckily, my employer seems to have everything under control. Don't worry, they're experts.

Till next time....

DM

The Buildup

2010-03-28T19:54:00.015-05:00

As winter comes to an end, I invite all aviators who read this blog to consider taking a moment to snap a picture or two of some thunderstorms as they fly near/through/over them. This continued request comes second after the safe operation of the aircraft, of course!

I offer a few exposures of my past trip to and from Denver as mild inspiration.

Then over SYR...

I have flown mostly at night in the last few years, but I took advantage of jetBlue's new daytime flight back to Boston...

Here is a shot of the climb out heading east away from the front range.

Fuzzy clouds=Light chop.

There was a nice line of storms along the cold front moving over Indiana and Lake Michigan.

The seatbelt sign was off as we stayed well above the tops...

The skies cleared just in time for me to question "where the F%#^ is that!?" Oh, it's ice in Lake Erie....

It was hard to get a stable picture of the tip of Cayuga Lake and Ithaca in the moderate chop. It's always choppy here, just ask Air Canada...

And then the sun went down as we descended into a rainy evening in Boston....

Till next time...

DM

RME --> SYR

2010-03-17T15:31:00.003-05:00

I'm back from my nice, four-day jaunt over to Denver. It could have been warmer, or sunnier. But, whatever. It was still lots of fun and I enjoyed my vacation. I also had a mostly smooth flight for the first time in a long time, it seems. Expect some pictures to follow.

-----

In my area, the biggest "event" of late was the consolidation of Griffiss Approach into Syracuse Approach. I had argued before that moving controllers' homes and workplaces away from their airspace is never good for safety, but it was hard to argue that RME approach was too busy to be closed...and the FAA wouldn't take "just fix the leaky roof with Stimulus money" for an answer. Most of the controllers in RME were able to transfer to other facilities, and a few others will commute, and later move to SYR, last I heard. The control tower at RME airport remains open as a separate facility.

On the operational front, the merge was preempted by a half hour long briefing in the conference room about a week ahead of time. Our letter of agreement (the agreed upon procedures between facilities) was canceled with RME approach, of course, and changes were made to the Syracuse Letter of Agreement to include the procedures for the RME airspace addition. There were still some automation issues to be addressed, but it seemed rather straightforward, and has proven to be a mostly smooth transition on our end.

Our 06, 21, and 36 landlines were relabeled, and our communications touch-screen looks much better organized, in my opinion.

But that isn't very interesting, so I'll go over some issues we've had.

At the briefing, I asked a simple question: "Do we flash the planes to R or S if they are going into the old RME airspace, and what will the datablock say to indicate that we are handing the plane off to the correct SYR approach sector?"

For handoffs to other ATC facilities, we have simplified automation. We type a single letter: C for Cleveland Center, N for New York Center and all the approach controls using their HOST computer for flight data (BGM, AVP, N90), A for Albany, S for Syracuse, L for Wheeler Sack, and R for Griffiss, then input the aircraft ID, hit ENTER, and it should flash to the appropriate sector based on route of flight and altitude. So, do I still use R? The initial answer was "yes, because of ERAM, we still have to flash to R, then it will forward to S automatically, and who knows what the datablock will say, it should be obvious." Oh OK. There were a few other questions that received the always popular "use your best judgment" answer. We all rolled our eyes.

Then, on the day of the merge, we were told NOT to flash to R, only use S, and that has worked every since. HOST still gets a little confused which sector we want the plane to flash to sometimes, and that requires manual coordination using one of our fancy, new, relabeled landlines.

Our new Letter of Agreement also added a new SYR departure route that avoids New York Center's airspace. Where as before, we always had to call New York before we could climb the plane above 10000 under their airspace if SYR was departing west. This new route was screwing up SYR approach's handoff to Boston Center (it kept trying to process the flight plan to New York, the very airspace it was meant to avoid, go figure), and it took a few hours to determine that this wasn't our problem, so the tower was tasked with fixing the routes for the departure controller.

Ending on a positive, our new Letter of Agreement allows us to clear everyone direct to their airport, so that makes the pilots happy.

I would say, from my view, operationally, the consolidation has gone better than expected. I can't say the same for the controllers who have to pack up and move away and learn new airspace...

Till next time...

DM

Cleared for Takeoff

2010-03-03T16:59:00.006-05:00

Someone is always listening. That is part of the job description of being an air traffic controller. We hope the pilots are listening, but isn't always the case based on some recent "NORDO" events that have made headlines. LiveATC.net doesn't have any live feeds of my area, so bad phraseology and dumb jokes tend to go unnoticed by the public. But everything we do is taped by the FAA. Every computer input is reviewable. And the blips/airplanes are full of people. We all take that very seriously, but, at the same time, have to put these things in the back of our minds to do our job successfully.

Things are sometimes said on frequency that we immediately regret, or at least a "I hope nothing happens to this guy or they're gonna pull the tapes" thought flashes through our minds for a moment, and then we move on and keep working. Our workday consists of many ups and downs, and we often go from being freakishly busy to mostly dull and back again within the course of a shift. That's just how airline schedules work. These "dull" times aren't void of airplanes, but there is nothing complicated happening. These are often the times when silly comments are made, or we spend a few seconds longer inquiring about the ride reports, or ask an simple question about a new aircraft's performance. It keeps us sane and alert.

Controllers are paid a lot of money to make good judgment calls thousands of times, if not millions of times, a day. As much as it is a part of our job, we are NOT solely paid to talk on the radio, nor is issuing clearances on frequency the most difficult part of our job. This job is all about formulating a plan and a series of timed transmissions to make the plan work. We are paid to manage our airspace and our frequencies together.

This is in response to all the media hoopla in regards to a controller that let his child transmit to airplanes. The child was not being an air traffic controller. The child was not in control of the airspace. The child was relaying clearances that the controller was instructing the child to transmit on frequency, in a similar fashion that FSS controllers relay clearances to planes at uncontrolled airports. (This is NOT intended to undermine my FSS friends, just to make a point) The controller, who is trusted to make judgments about everything else in regards to his operational position, apparently is not trusted to determine that two airplanes awaiting takeoff at one of the busiest airports in the world is slow enough to let his child have a great experience on his winter break with his dad at work. If something other than "cleared for takeoff" and "contact departure" needed to be said, it WOULD have been said.

Sorry for the op-ed piece. Let's focus on stuff that is actually unsafe. Check out the newest adjacent sector "ATCfreqs" for some important information about ERAM. Let's not get distracted by a controller who can't get a day off to spend with his kid because the FAA is under-staffing his tower.

Till next time...

DM

NRP

2010-02-22T15:54:00.010-05:00

The National Route Program was developed as a way for participating airlines to fly routes of their choosing based on weather conditions. The only requirements are that they fly standard routes within 200 miles of their departure and destination airports. This ensures an orderly traffic flow during climb and descent. NRP is generally only used for flights over 1000 miles.

When the aircraft are west of Chicago, the western US airspace has a grid pattern of blandly-named, unpronounceable navigation fixes to facilitate flexibility in NRP flight planning. These are referred to as High Altitude Redesign (HAR) fixes. Under NRP rules, airlines may file these HAR fixes to help them make the most out of a headwind or tailwind and/or to avoid thunderstorms or military training airspace. These flights are conducted with advanced GPS navigation, and none of these fixes require any ground based facilities. Some airlines use these fixes more than others. Many choose to fly coast to coast, clearly not in a straight line, under NRP rules, and use only ground based VORs the whole way, keeping the same zig-zagging routes that NextGen will supposedly solve by eliminating VOR navigation. Our current system appears to meet the needs of airlines attempting to save money by flying fuel efficient routes of their choice.

From an ATC standpoint, any aircraft with "NRP" in the remarks of their flight plan should not be given any shortcuts, unless requested by the pilot, and if we have to change their altitude or route due to other conflicting traffic, we are supposed to return that flight to its requested route and altitude as soon as possible.

So let us review a few flights that fly from Boston to San Fransisco in the mid-morning everyday.

Feb 14th

-----
UAL719 B757 (United)
Departed Boston at 8:20am.

Filed NRP over Sault St. Marie, then to Minneapolis, airways to Rock Springs, WY, and then Coaldale, NV for the arrival.

Time enroute, with some vectors by Oakland Center: 5:30
-----

AAL183 B757 (American)
Departed Boston at 8:26am, Six minutes behind United.

Filed NRP over Canada in a similar fashion as United, but only as far north as Green Bay. They used a few of the HAR fixes (KP87G, KP81A, KD66S, and KU54M) to connect Green Bay with Medicine Bow, WY and Myton, UT.

After getting a few vectors, as well, approaching SFO, they arrived 14 minutes after United for a total of 5:38.
-----

VRD351 A319 ("Redwood" Virgin America)
Departed Boston at 8:59am, 33 minutes after American.

They filed over Canada as well, but not quite as north as Green Bay. They used 6 HAR fixes to get to Delta, UT. They were also not vectored quite as much by Oakland Center, but given a few wild turns by the approach control.

Total time en-route: 5:40.
-----

JBU631 A320 (jetBlue)
Departed Boston at 9:46am, 47 minutes after the Virgin.

They joined the Canadian party as well, but instead of flying over Utah and approaching SFO from the east, they chose to stay north of everyone else, flying over Crazy Woman, WY (everyone loves that VOR for some reason) to Reno, NV and then joined the arrival from the north. They started south, and ended up north.

They received a big vector to final by approach, and still matched AAL183 with a time en-route of 5:38.
-----

For more perspective, lets look at UAL719 from the day before:

They filed over Syracuse and remained south, compared to the next day, until Utah. However, they either didn't request NRP rules, or they requested a shortcut, because they were cleared direct ONL (O'neill, NE) while climbing out over MHT, and then Cleveland Center gave them direct Coaldale, NV. They were given a brief vector over Nevada, but the most straight-in approach. Gotta love Saturday morning. Still, the flight took 5:45.
-----

Lesson: Using "old-fashioned" VOR navigation doesn't always hinder a flight and force the airlines to lose money. Flying direct routing doesn't always mean the fastest flight time using the least amount of fuel.

Thanks as always to Flightaware.com!

Till next time....

DM

Jealous?

2010-02-15T19:44:00.007-05:00

I'm busily gathering information for my NRP post, but, for now, I couldn't help but wonder what the NY/NJ Port Authority would be willing to pay to have a 152 arrival rate like Denver has in their Land North/South configuration, show above. They land on 35R/35L/16R/16L and depart 25/08. They make it look effortless because none of the traffic flows cross on the ground or in the air. Granted, the arrival flows are in opposite directions....Visual only.

Currently, LGA is sporting a 44 arrival rate, EWR a 38 rate, and JFK a 42 rate (the three total 124). In a few hours, NYC will be IFR with some snow, bringing the rates down considerably. In similar conditions, Denver would have to drop to a 96....Gasp!

Till next time...

DM

Ahhh, Chop.

2010-02-05T14:20:00.002-05:00

It is always amazing how a night full of bad rides gives me more of a headache than anything else. That headache also seems to spur memory loss of the last time the rides were really bad. I keep forgetting....

The winds aloft the past few days have been screaming out of the west at over 200knots. Wind like that is never smooth. So everyone was down below FL290 burning lots of gas but enjoying the relatively smooth air that was only blowing at 120 knots.

During the early afternoon, planes hadn't taken the high wind/turbulence reports seriously (until a few reported severe turbulence at FL360), and were constantly asking if their bumpy ride would continue westbound. Every single plane checks in with a "how's the ride?"

"callsign, Boston Center, Light chop FL300 to FL340, light to moderate or even worse above FL350"
"How's 380?"
"Moderate"
"oh, how about 280"
"Mostly smooth."
"Ok, we'll get back to you," as they decide if they have enough fuel to descend into thicker air for the long haul to the west coast.

70 airplanes later...I have a headache.

Eventually, all the planes just plan on staying below FL280 until they get west of BUF. I gladly take this over the previous situation where everyone was spread out at different altitudes complaining. I tell myself I'd much rather have everyone happy at their smooth altitude keeping quiet, in confliction with 5 other planes also stopped below the chop, at a few altitudes. I'll happily vector all day long, criss-crossing west and soutbound flights over SYR. Granted, I wouldn't say that if I lost my frequencies or my radar, but I take things like that for granted on days like this.

By the evening, the worst of the turbulence had moved east of the BOS area, and my airspace was mostly smooth at all altitudes. However, the airlines still were dispatching their airplanes with enough fuel to make it out west at the lower altitudes based on the old turbulence reports, and so, climbing to a higher fuel effecient altitude would actually leave many airplanes overweight at their destination. So, well into the night, airliners were still stuck in the lower flight levels, making life fun for the low altitude sectors that don't normally work those flights.

I won't even discuss how the huge winds ruined my attempt at IAD spacing....

Hopefully this will segment into my post-in-development about NRP as a follow up to the VOR post.

Till then....

DM

Wobbily (or the "self vector")

2010-01-20T01:11:00.014-05:00

This is a VOR.

While most planes that fly around these days are equipped with fancy GPS receivers, there are still a few that don't; namely, some cargo 727s and the Northwest/Delta DC-9 fleet. We also work some smaller general aviation traffic that can't afford, or have no need, to upgrade beyond VOR (ground based) navigation. In addition, many of the no-longer-up-and-coming Very Light Jets never got their GPS's IFR certified.

Aircraft with GPS can be cleared direct to any point they wish, assuming such routing is safe and orderly within the context of the NAS. In my area's case, eastbound traffic can be cleared as far as the start of the North Atlantic route structure (where Canadian controllers transition to non-radar procedures). Westbound traffic can usually get whatever they want, as long as it keeps them north of the NY-Chicago line. Southbound traffic has to go through NY Center, so they don't get anything! Aircraft without GPS are confined to airways that are connected by operational VORs on the ground or by controller provided radar vectors. It should be noted that while GPS aircraft still fly the same routes as non-GPS aircraft, overflying the same VORs and waypoints, these GPS aircraft can still use the VORs in a virtual manner even if they are out of service. There are some conflicting rules about this when aircraft are below radar coverage (MSS departures that have GPS aren't allowed to fly over MSS VOR in their initial clearance because it is not receivable below 10000 to VOR only aircraft). The rules haven't caught up with our technology. We are still forced to clear aircraft short to a local NDB, as I've mentioned in previous posts.

Since VORs are slowly being phased out, less money has been delegated to their maintenance. They have become less reliable and their signals have become less powerful.

While VORs have never been as precise a navigating tool as the GPS is currently, it has become noticeably worse in recent years. Aircraft THINK they are navigating directly to a VOR on their radial, as indicated on their instruments, but their track tells a different story.

This DC-9 was cleared direct and was receiving SYR VOR at point D in the photo above. The aircraft stays on course according to the on-board instruments. Little does the crew realize how many extra miles they are flying by not having GPS. SYR VOR has always had a nasty tendency to make aircraft "dip" to the south, and then once the aircraft gets much closer, they turn back towards the actual VOR location and fly straighter.

I prefer my planes to fly direct to the next point in their flight plan in the straightest line possible, if not just because it looks better, but also, because it is the shortest route out of my sector. That is good for everyone involved. If an aircraft files non-GPS in their flight plan, I try to help them out and keep them close to their intended route as much as possible. This does add workload and radio transmissions, so they can't always be accommodated as I would hope. Also, if a DC-9 is first in line to DTW when there is in-trail spacing...well, I don't want them adding more miles to their route of flight. Every mile that non-GPS aircraft adds to its route, I have to delay the rest of the pack behind them.

So I try to watch the DC-9 as it heads west on J547 (straight line airway between CAM and SYR). They naturally wobble a little as they recapture the outbound CAM radial, adjusting for the wind and the weakened signal. When I get a few target hits in a row that line up well with J547, I jump into action. See point A below.

"Northwest 7xxx, fly present heading, vectors for SYR, expect direct SYR when you get a little closer."

Then once they are approaching SYR (point B, below):

"Northwest 7xxx, cleared direct SYR, contact Cleveland Center 119.37, good day."

These two pictures above are tracks from the same DC-9 flight from PVD-DTW a few days apart. The difference is that I assigned present heading to the second one and didn't let them fly all over the place. Of course, if the plane will need to be vectored for spacing to DTW then I just let the SYR VOR signal do the spacing for me!

This last picture is the GPS equipped Regional Jet that was cleared direct BUF south of CAM and flies a nice straight line to get there. Yes, they got a nice direct route because they had GPS. This RJ flight flies through a completely different sector (Rockdale instead of Utica like the DC-9s above) but only because the of the late night time frame. It flies through after the busy evening traffic but before the last big eastbound rush of the night, with lots of BOS, MHT, PVD, and ISP traffic descending in that airspace. The DC-9s come through in the late afternoon, and even if they had GPS, they wouldn't necessarily get a shortcut. That just wouldn't be safe or orderly for the Rockdale sector.

Now that we've established that GPS is great and planes can go anywhere they want, the next post will discuss why planes don't always WANT to go direct to far away places, regardless of all that NextGen hype about point to point VOR navigation killing the airlines with longer routes and wasted fuel and time...

Till then...

DM

EDIT:
I updated the first picture to include what "direct SYR" should have looked like (the radial, not J547, that the DC9 was following to get to SYR) with a line and arrows.

As always, thanks for flightaware.com for their tracking maps!

This is Normal

2010-01-11T14:21:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I'm glad I just sit in a dark room and talk to airplanes over the radio because there are times when my restraint would go by the wayside and I just want to reach over and smack the pilot up-side the head, but I'd get in trouble if I did that....so.....

I'll just tell you about it.

I was sitting at Albany radar, and it was slow. Saturday evenings tend to be that way. There were a few lingering European arrivals coming into Newark, and we had 15 miles in trail that we had to give to New York Approach. The first plane calls himself Mystral zero zero three, although where Mystral comes from is nothing but a Mystery to me. Since I don't have any traffic, I just descend him to 16000 without a restriction at ALB; they'll probably cross it anyways out of habit. He is assigned Mach .81 since a Continental jet is close behind assigned Mach .78.

I ask the Mystral what his "Normal" speed would be (if you didn't have a speed assigned, how fast would you fly on your own?) He responds, "uh, we go 290 knots, but can go faster if you'd like, sir". I love polite foreign pilots. "Rgr, standby."

"Continental 55, what speed would you transition to normally?"
"Uh, we can do whatever you need, what would you like?"
"Continental 55, that wasn't what I asked, if I deleted your speed restriction, what speed will you transition (from mach number to indicated knots) to normally"

I'm a compromising kind of guy. Mystral said he'd go faster, so if COA WANTS to speed up to 310 or something, I'll give them both 300 knots. If COA is currently assigned faster than he would normally be flying, I'll just let them both fly how they'd like and the spacing will work out on its own.

"We'll do whatever you need us to do, center, Continental 55"

At this point, I just want a number. Anything. Lie to me. I don't care. Whatever, I'll just turn this guy out and get my spacing that way.

"Mystral 003 maintain two niner zero knots or greater, thank you."

Continental comes back and responds that "normal is 290 as well". "Roger, upon leaving FL230, resume normal speed." Sigh. Once below FL230, the COA55 is in my airspace and I turn him right to a 270 heading to get my 15 miles. My D-side gives me some crap about wasting transmissions and I re-clear the COA55 on course.

-----------------

This has happened before. I recall a similar instance a few months back during the early morning rush at DNY/HNK sector.

We needed 20 miles in trail for LGA props, and, as always, the ROC and SYR departures were mostly tied up. I won't name names because, frankly, this is a little embarrassing. They are both Dash 8-200s (see picture above), and the first plane is flying along at about the same speed as the other, if not a few knots faster, so I plan on assigned that speed or greater to make sure he doesn't slow down without telling me. I'll vector the second one to get the 20 miles I need and then assign the same speed or less to keep the spacing. Both planes are the same type, so I'm pretty sure if the first one can fly a speed, the second one can do that too...

"callsign, you're number one to LGA today, say speed." Pilots feel special when you tell them they're first!
"Roger that, Center, we'll give you anything, what do you need?" Seriously.
My D-side and I both exchange the "answer the question without asking another question" look. My first thought is to answer his question with ultra-sarcasm, like Mach 1, or something. My second thought is how tough would it be to make this guy number 2...I tone it down a little...

"callsign, roger, maintain 290 knots or greater, advise if unable". Nothing but professionalism at all times. I know they can't go that fast (the 'advise if unable' is the hint not to accept the clearance), but you said you could give me anything I needed, buddy, and 290 knots sure would help my spacing!

"Roger, 290 or greater."
My D-side exchange another look, this one almost comical. He SOOOO didn't just take that clearance, did he!?

Then another voice, most likely the captain, keys up with a "uh, we can't do that, how about 220 knots?" That's more like it.

"Roger, maintain 220 knots or greater."

---------

Till next time....

DM

Strange Maps

2009-12-23T14:05:00.002-05:00

I'll be heading down to Atlanta for a wedding the week of New Years. Here is one last post for 2009. Have a good holiday and I'll talk to ya next year.

If you're a little too into maps than you should be, like me, enjoy the strange maps on the newest adjacent sector to the right.

Till next time...

DM

A Nor'easter of flavor and boredom

2009-12-19T17:46:00.005-05:00

This slow Saturday night shift has been amplified by the blizzard across the east coast. It's a perfect night to make a Chipotle run! Light traffic, night differential pay, and a steak burrito. Yup.

Till next time....

DM

The Mid-Flick 2 - Cancel my Refresher Training

2009-12-15T11:00:00.003-05:00

No less than a week after I write about my lack of practice with the back-up system, I have swapped to a Sunday night midnight shift, and, lo and behold, I'm handwriting strips like a madman and pounding the beacon key entering callsigns into the back-up system's flight list.

When our HOST computer fails, or is taken offline for scheduled maintenance in the wee hours of the morning (like this time), we switch to our back-up system, called EDARC. EDARC is a catchy acronym, but using the back-up system really is a time machine back to the Dark Ages. Ya know, back when men were men, and we actually needed a pen to do this job.

After working some rather slow late night traffic from 10pm to 11:30pm, I ate my snack and hit the bathroom in preparation for the first half of the morning in the control room alone. Relief comes figuratively and literally at 3am, and if it's as boring as I think it will be, I'll be killing the battery on my iPod touch to stay awake.

One of the newer radar trainees in Area E is hanging out on the mid-shift tonight, and I quickly realize what this means: we're going (E)DARC! The OMIC announces this fact a few minutes later, to confirm the official-ity of the situation. I stow my iPod back into my pocket for safekeeping and prepare for the loss of almost all the high-tech automation we're used to using.

I print up a bunch of blank strips, get some blank paper just in case, and, since I have no airplanes at the moment, I stroll across the aisle to get a quick run-down on how to use EDARC from the instructor in Area E. I had only used EDARC once or twice, and never with more than one airplane at a time. Luckily, I was able to absorb the much needed lesson plan meant for this newbie (he wishes he could have my operating initials DM, but never will, bwhahahaha!) who was learning all of this for the first time, as a requirement before he is certified on his first radar sectors. I returned to my own sector and set up the mini strip bay just to the right of the scope for easy access. The clock strikes twelve fifteen AM local time and HOST prints up all the flight plans it has stored. The CID is replaced with XXX, and this means that shutdown is upon us. I make the two fingered keyboard command to change over to EDARC and then call all the facilities around me to remind them "manual handoffs only". I can only flash handoffs to Boston Center sectors now. HOST becomes EDARC. URET just goes dark.

Seven strips print. I post them in my bay and sort them by time. After writing my previous post a few days earlier, I make a mental promise to accurately mark all of them. I'm gonna party like its 1999! So far this is a lot less stressful than the Academy or D-school. I get a few manual handoffs from Cleveland and those planes come and go. I experiment a little with the format of the different inputs into the computer. By about 1am, I let Cleveland know that VIR8 is the last flight plan I have, so they'll have to call ahead and pass the flight plan data over the landline from now on. After I take down the flight plan, I write a strip for myself, and then one for each of the other areas in Boston Center that the flight will pass through. Then I walk down the aisle and give them the strips so they'll know where the plane is going when I hand them off to them in a few minutes. That is for one airplane. The level of automation in regards to the flight data is taken for granted.

At 1:15AM, I get the handoff on the VIR8 flight, but Cleveland has another flight plan for me to write down. I copy the flight plan as far as the North Atlantic Track, and then write up the other two strips, one for Area B, and one for Area D. We have a big monitor on the wall at the end of my area, and we display flight plan data on there. If any other Center has a flight plan, it'll show up for me to verify and copy if I have to. It doesn't show shortcuts and updates, though.

New York Center calls me with two flights, and they are sad to hear that I have no information at all on them. They quickly read me the cargo flight going to Europe, again, just a few fixes to the North Atlantic Track, but the Asiana to Korea.... I'm gonna need the whole thing, and then I'm going to have to relay that to Toronto.

KJFK ./. SYR YCF YYB J490 YTS YYU NCA19 YGX NCA19 CHAPO NCA19 GAL J122 OME KUTAL B233 TISUR B233 NULAR B467 KANSU B467 KAE G597 ENKAS RKSI

I see that up on the big screen and I read it off to NY to verify it. I get an affirmative. Excellent. An ALB departure comes off westbound requesting FL430. The Asiana is climbing to Fl300, and Cleveland is calling to pass a flight plan for a Boston arrival at FL370. I take the handoff on the line from Albany approach and climb him to FL280 to start. I'm so busy taking calls and writing on strips I figure I should keep my airplanes separated, too. It was amazing how quickly I could get distracted from my primary duty to keep airplanes from colliding. I call Toronto and ask if they have any flight plan on this Asiana, which they don't. I can at least start at YYU, and clear the Asiana direct. While I'm spelling the Asiana's route out to Toronto, based on what I see on my overhead screen, Cleveland is calling for to handoff on the Boston arrival and overseas guy. New York is calling about a lifeguard flight going to Montreal... "...negavtive, It was GOLF alpha lima, Jay one two two, Oscar Mike Echo...." "Ok, you got it. He's radar? Thanks!"

Cleveland is frantically calling me, thinking either the landline died or I'm snoring. Little does he know, I'm clutching a black telephone to my head while I concentrate on the huge 60 inch plasma screen on the wall. I must have looked like a submarine captain coordinating a torpedo attack. Battle-stations! Ok, back to the phones. The Asiana is pulling in front of my Albany departure, so I keep the climb going to FL360. The Boston arrival checks in and I clear him to GDM to keep him south of my ALB departure, who gets FL430 finally. Now I'm hurriedly copying flight plans for the Montreal arrival for Area B, and the Boston and overseas flight for Area B and D. I run down the aisle to deliver the strips. I get back a minute later and switch all the planes to surrounding sectors. Luckily, Cleveland had the flight plan info for the ALB departure since there was a proposal in the HOST when it shut down. In 8 minutes time, I went from having one airplane to six and then to one at a time again. So much for being tired...

I faithfully posted and marked strips for all my planes except the Asiana. I was the only area that worked that flight, so I didn't feel too bad about it. I could only imagine what would have happened had there been more airplanes, more sectors, and controllers running around the control room with strips. Call me a purist, but I enjoyed it. Fine, call me crazy.

Till next time....

DM

Zero

2009-12-04T23:33:00.004-05:00

Many of my friends from college fly airplanes for a living. I even considered doing that until I decided that the best part of flying was talking on the radio. Now I can go to work and hear myself talk all day! Its great.

Through my friends' stories of trial and tribulation in their company's simulators, I'm familiar, and we should all be so relieved, with the regular training that airline pilots endure to maintain their proficiency in the specific type of plane they fly. Anything and everything that could possibly go wrong in their airplane is practiced until they show the instructor a satisfactory result.

On September 25th, 2007, in a land far, far away.... Ok, it was in Memphis, but I digress....

Controllers lost their radar and they lost their radios. Memphis Center declared ATC-0, and the airspace was shut down (did they have any other choice!?). Sectors in other facilities around Memphis kept planes out of Memphis' airspace. Planes that were about to take off where held on the ground. The airplanes left hurtling above the darkened land... Well, I'm not sure what happened. News reports describe the chaos that ensued as "controllers whipped out their cell phones..." But who did they call!? I asked my supervisor a few weeks later. "I dunno, ask the OMIC" The OMIC is the Operational Manager In Charge for the entire control room, overseeing all the areas.

So I walked down the aisle and asked the OMIC. I suggested that the FAA put out a memo, or something, that described what happened, why it happened, and who all those controllers called on their cell phones. What could we do better next time and what worked as good as it could have given the dire situation? I was relatively new to the FAA and young and stupid, I guess. I got a startling answer: "If you lost everything, just tell your supervisor. We have a satellite phone to call the airlines, and they'll email their planes to change to other frequencies in other facilities around us. As long as you always ensure separation, everything will be fine!" "But who did the controllers call on their cell phones? What am I expected to do!? Its my sector!," I pleaded. "Am I supposed to just throw my hands up and tell my supervisor? Really!?" The OMIC had better things to do than deal with this, "Yup. Really." Oh, FAA, how I love you.

I was shocked, to say the least. Two years later, I've finally found a link to a full article that actually mentions, with some detail, who the controllers called, and what that actually accomplished that day in Memphis. Read it here.

The article mentions how controllers in Memphis called controllers they knew in surrounding facilities. These controllers were able to use planes in THEIR sectors to fetch planes on Memphis' frequencies (planes are transmitters too, ya know) and bring them all in contact with this other controller who then relayed clearances for the controller in Memphis. That's great, except we're not supposed to have our phones on in the area, so no one would pick up. Add that to the contingency plan....

A few months later, Boston Center's HOST computer had an issue and we were forced to use the backup system during a busy afternoon. I say, "we", but it happened on my day off. I still think about what I would have done if I was there. We had radar and we still got to talk to the airplanes, but our backup system doesn't use our new fancy strip-replacement screen, URET. The last time I used strips was in D-school - over 3 years ago. Yes, we still write on strips at the Watertown sector for operations in and out of our non-towered airports, but that's one or two at a time.

Pilots practice stuff like this at least twice a year. We should be using strips at least that often so that, when something happens, we can deal with the actual problem, not our lack of proficiency with our backup system. This may be unpopular, but en-route controllers should spend time working busy traffic with strips enough so that it doesn't feel completely foreign if we need to use it in an emergency. This practice may be impractical working live traffic, as beneficial as I think it would be, for, say, a week at a time, once or twice a year. At least make us spend some quality time in the simulators with strips. How about include it as part of refresher training? If nothing else, it will be a good history lesson for the newer generation.

I bring this up because we recently changed our contingency plan to include non-radar routing through the ATC-0 airspace after it is "stabilized". The printed up power-point presentation lacked details. It didn't include a plan for how controllers were supposed to deal with the situation. So I actually went and read the whole PDF file. And IT lacked detail, as well. Boston Center's specific plan is at the OMIC desk "for easy reference". Throw your hands in the air. Why should we care? If you're flying through my airspace and something happens, you don't want me handing it over to the supervisor. Trust me.

Till next time...

DM

Thanks!

2009-11-25T22:04:00.000-05:00

For those of you, like me, working in the high-speed aluminum tubing industry, let's be thankful that we are able to serve the flying public when they need us the most. For those of you getting the weekend off....

Enjoy your turkey!

Till next time...

DM

E-Scammin'

2009-11-22T01:12:00.004-05:00

By now many of you are aware of NextGen, the FAA's vague plan to change the world, courtesy of your tax dollars. The first big step in this plan is to convert the main computer system that has been in use (and running strong, sorta) since the 1960s (EDIT, I'm told the actual machines in use are only from the 80s...). Yes, it is out of date. But it works. The same cannot be said, as of November 2009, for the new computer system, ERAM.

ERAM is supposed to be deployed already, at least to most of the Centers. So far it's stuck at the first implementation in Salt Lake. We don't hear much about it in Boston, except that it is coming, and we need to get ready for it, and that it will solve all of our problems! The FAA sends controllers up a few at a time to watch a computer based lesson plan detailing the future features of ERAM. There is even a test at the end implying that the informative lecture should be committed to memory and we will be obligated to fully understand the concepts when the system goes online months and years down the road. Yet, all of the features are "subject to change" prior to Boston actually getting plugged in. I'll try to remember the differences while I'm working live traffic on our old HOST system 40+ hours a week.

ERAM is hitting a little closer to home in Seattle Center. They work directly with Salt Lake and have seen first hand the uncertainty that comes with testing such an important piece of safety equipment on live traffic, only to watch it not work. As it turns out, one of the controllers there has been writing a much better, more informative blog for years longer than I have even been a controller. I invite you to slew over to the newest adjacent sector and check out the FAA Follies. I try to avoid the politics whenever possible, but, when they cannot be avoided, the Follies is all over it.

Till next time....

DM

PS. These spectator computer lessons are not going to be our only training on the new system, we'll get a few days in the simulators, but still.......

So close yet so far...

2009-10-31T01:08:00.006-05:00

When it comes to Air Traffic, I am always on the lookout for new information to learn. Controllers in my area will give me a lot of crap for knowing too much about things I have no business knowing. Last week someone was angered about another area's move and yells out to no one in particular, maybe the wall, "Hey, don't be short cutting guys when there's an EDCT for construction..." I blurted out "To Minnie?" "Uh, yeah, how the *#&^ did you know that?" Shrug, "this buddy of mine was writing about it in HIS blog..."

Anytime I go to a new city, I try to get a tour of an ATC facility there. Most facilities have their little quirks and oddities that never cease to fascinate me. Four years later, I think I have finally found Boston Center's quirk.

Boston Center has 5 areas, A-E. In training, we would just randomly go and spend time in other area's to see traffic from their perspective. I personally spent time in Area B and E a few times, and occasionally stop and talk to people in Area D. Until today, I had never stepped foot inside Area C. They are one of the busiest areas in the Center, if not THE busiest. My area only works with one of their sectors (BOSOX) directly. The rest, while only 40-50 miles from my area, is a mystery. I know they work JFK arrivals from the northeast. They work more BOS arrivals than we do and about half the BOS departures. The Hampton Sector goes crazy in the summer. Boston High works tons of overseas departures. Other than that, that's it.

So, I had the distinct pleasure of being RM's special guest as I was sidetracked on my way out of the control room to go on break. How could I turn her invitation down!? I got a quick overview of PVD sector, which works all the BOS arrivals, and BOSOX, which works the departures and takes PVD arrivals from the ALB sector (my ALB sector!) and descends them into PVD approach (hey! I just worked that guy!). They weren't very busy, so we chatted about nerdy controller stuff. They use 3 mile separation in a big chunk of their area. Area A doesn't use 3 mile separation...YET. They're working on it.

About 99 percent of En-route Center airspace requires 5 miles separation and 1000 feet vertical below FL410. This 5 mile requirement is necessary because we combine numerous long range radar data into one "mosaic" display on our screen. There is no radar sweep or anything like that. There are a few places where the computer will only use one radar site at a time, and as long as the plane is below FL180 and within 40 miles of the single radar site being used, we can use 3 miles, just like an approach control. Boston Center has more 3 mile separation areas than any other Center. At least, that is what they tell us to make us feel special.

The same 40 mile rule applies to approach controls. However, since approach controls are centered around their radar, only small portions of their airspace exist beyond the 40 mile bubble. Thus, 5 mile separation is considered more of an exception to their 3 mile, 1000 foot rule.

The Providence (PVD) sector in Area C descends Boston arrivals to cross PVD VOR at 11000, who are then handed off to Boston Approach. PVD sector uses 3 mile separation within 40 miles of PVD airport's radar site. Providence, RI is more than 40 miles from Boston (42.7 according to Airnav), so the approach control they hand off to requires 5 miles at that point of transfer. While the Center can allow planes to get within 3 miles as they descend into Boston, they must take action to regain 5 miles again before handoff to Approach. This seems to be the only instance in the US where the En-route Center requires less separation than the approach control taking the hand off below them!

If anyone around the country or the world has any examples of this occurring elsewhere, please comment!

Till next time....

DM

PHOTO NOTE:
Thanks as always to SkyVector.
Light Blue shows the Boston arrivals.
Dark Green shows the PVD arrivals that descend under the Boston arrivals.
Boston Departures go out over LUCOS, BOSOX to BDL and GLYDE to BAF. Consider it a Where's Waldo of fixes!

IFR at O90

2009-10-17T01:38:00.001-05:00

My area has 6 sectors. We generally only have 4 of them open. In this case, the ART/UCA sectors are combined 90 percent of the time. Most of the planes that traverse the ART sector end up conflicting with planes in the UCA sector, so it really works out pretty good. Most planes are flying into the wind, so there is plenty of time to think about the imminent death that potentially could happen over SYR, the main confliction point. If there was any sector that I like the least, it would be ART/UCA. Sometimes it is really fun, though!

These two sectors, when combined, are, from a mental task standpoint, three sectors. UCA sector is the main westbound J547 route leaving ZBW. ART sector works alot of military operations (the MOA stuff on the chart above), coordinates with the Canadians from Canadia, and also sees alot of transient traffic going to eastern Canada and points east. Then there are all the "satellite airport" operations into OGS, MSS, PTD, and MAL. That action tends to take place below 10000, and can really create a headache if coupled with lots of in-trail in the UCA sector. For the most part we can't do any vectoring to approaches, although if I can throw down some ILS approach phraseology, I'll pass breaks!

We generally only see one or two operations at a time into these 4 airports we own up along the border, if any at all. Due to their proximity to each other and our lack of control towers and radar, it is one-in, one-out when the weather is bad. No, we don't get to line 6 planes up on final like Boston Approach. There are times when we get a big bunch of inbounds all at once, and we joke that we become Ogdensburg Approach instead of Center controllers. I will now coin the term "O-90" for this third segment of our sector; the part below 10000 between Wheeler-Sack approach to the west, Ottawa Terminal and Montreal Centre to the north, and the Montpelier sector to the east. Controllers may appreciate my attempt at witty aviation humor, or not. Either way, let's get on with the story.

Last weekend was Columbus Day, and everyone was flying up north to see the leaves change colors. Unfortunately, for those spending their hard earned money flying up to see them, the weather sucked (Ok, I think Sunday was nice!). Allow me to recap Friday evening. I had been at ART/UCA D-side for most of the afternoon, and had left for a break with one slow moving PA32 inbound to OGS from the south. I returned 35 minutes later to fully entrench myself back into ART/UCA D-side... A biz-jet had come screaming in from the west and gone into OGS first, and only now was the PA32 finally getting an approach clearance. The UCA portion of the sector was heating up with westbound jets, and my radar controller was initiating some DTW and CLE spacing.

Two Cape Air C402s departed ALB, one bound for OGS and the other for MSS, as normal, and the MSS inbound offered to slow down and hold for their company to get into OGS first, since we can't run simultaneous approaches.

Flight service calls and requests IFR clearance for two aircraft out of OGS, a SR22 and the biz-jet Citation that had just landed before.
"Uh, I'm still waiting for a cancellation from a PA32 at OGS"
"Oh, I have that, yes, he cancelled IFR," says the FSS
"Ok, who is ready to go first, is one of them number one for the runway?"
"Yeah, the Cirrus (SR22)" ...Great....

I turn to my Radar controller and ask her if I can launch a departure or two ahead of the Cape Air inbounds. She stops the OGS arrival at 6000 and clears him to the OGIVE beacon on the Localizer approach to hold awaiting departures. The MSS arrival gets 7000 and direct the MISSE beacon on the ILS approach to hold, as well. We only own 6000 and below along the river so I'll have to point him out to Montreal Center at some point. The SR22 filed some random route to HYA, so I cross it out and write a better route underneath.

I pick up the FSS line again.
"(the SR22) is cleared from the OGS airport to the OGIVE beacon via direct, maintain 5000, expect routing to HYA via ALB V130 MVY direct and higher when radar identified, clearance void if not off by....(10 minutes at the most), contact boston center on 135.25, squawk code 4617, also verify the pilot can maintain his own terrain and obstruction avoidance to Ogive."
FSS reads it back and I tell him to call me back in a few minutes for the Citation, as I may be able to get him out, too. These Cape Air guys are still a ways out...

I put the strip into the small bay we have between the D and R positions, start a track on the scope to remind everyone that he's only climbing to 5000, and update the route into the computer. I take a quick look around the sector and call Toronto for a handoff. Then I call Montreal and make two handoffs and point out the MSS arrival holding at 7000. Its pretty darn busy in the southern half the sector, and right as I start to get a feel for what is transpiring, the FSS line rings again, requesting IFR on the Citation.

"Sorry, the first guy isn't off ye/"
My radar controller is waving at me and I look over to see an aircraft ident out of 3800 over Ogive. "Ooooo, he's off, standby please"

The track acquires on the SR22, and my radar controller starts issuing the clearance beyond the beacon. I motion her to follow the end of my pen on the strip to make sure she gives the correct route. "radar contact over ogive, cleared to HYA via..." Pen is over ALB, which was on the original filed route "via direct ALB..." Then down a line to V130 "V130, MVY, direct" Excellent, I wonder if he can climb above the Cape air and get outta there. I call Montreal back and point this Sr22 out climbing fast (for a prop) soutbound. She descends the Cape air to 5000, and they swap out nicely as the SR22 climbs to 9000. 6000 is now available for the MSS lander to hold so down he goes.

We still have 4000 available, and we actually saw the SR22 in radar there, so I get back on the line and quickly issue another short clearance to the Citation "cleared from OGS to the OGIVE beacon via direct, maintain 4000, expect routing to SYR via ART upon radar contact, clearance void if not off by... (you got 6 minutes buddy, make it quick), contact boston on 135.25, squawk code 0036, verify pilot can maintain...."

Start another track, put 4000 in the datablock, call Wheeler-Sack to pointout the SR22 climbing southeastbound. We got a RUT lander going head on with all our westbounds at FL410...and we need to get him down through everyone...somehow. I call Cleveland and get control to turn him left. My radar controller is really kickin' some ass. Off comes the Citation requesting 12000. I call Sack back and make the pointout climbing above his altitudes. He gets up to 4000 quickly and only has to make half a turn at OGIVE before we're clearing him on course to the southwest. He slingshots out of the hold just as the first Cape air is establishing a hold over OGIVE at 5000. We get our 5 miles quickly and climb the Citation up to 12000. Cape air is fully established in what is more of a procedure turn than anything, and gets his approach clearance. He promises to cancel as quick as he can so we can start his company into MSS.

After a few minutes, FSS calls back with an IFR cancellation at OGS and an approach clearance into MSS is issued. My radar controller finishes her fine work and the spacing is all taken care of. Switch the planes to Cleveland, give a briefing at O-90, put on my jacket and walk around the parking lot in the rain. Now that I think about it, maybe this sector isn't so bad after all....

Till next time...

DM

For those not familiar with all the acronyms:
ART - Watertown, NY
UCA - Utica, NY
SYR - Syracuse, NY
OGS - Ogdensburg, NY
MSS - Massena, NY
ALB - Albany, NY
HYA - Hyannis, MA (on the cape)
MVY - Martha's Vineyard
V130 - Airway between ALB and MVY
J547 - High altitude airway that goes from New Engalnd through Syracuse to Buffalo and points west.
MOA - Military Operation Area, when active, no IFR planes go in there at the altitudes reserved.

In Process...

2009-10-02T10:38:00.008-05:00

The FAA hiring process is an ever-changing, confusing process whose only constant is that it requires patience on behalf of the individual getting hired.

Patience is one thing, uncertainty is another. How long do you need to remain patient before you start wondering if they forgot who you are? A "quick" phone call to Oklahoma usually nets you a "we're working on it, be patient". Ok then. What to do with some free time before you get the call to report to training?

I worked some menial retail/temp/food service jobs until finally convincing Domino's Pizza to take me back as an assistant manager (I delivered pizza for 3 years in college). "When are you going to leave us to be a controller?" "I don't know. A year? Two? Six months if I'm lucky!?" I'd graduated from a CTI college (UND) over a year before and was told a year or so. Then the FAA stopped hiring for a while.

For some reason, I got the job(!) at a store about a half hour from my parents house (2 hours in rush hour, oh well) and have since amassed enough experience to permanently over qualify myself for any FAA management position. Eight months later I got the best phone call I've ever gotten and had a training date in Oklahoma City.

I could go on and on about how a Domino's pizza store runs surprisingly similar to an Area in an ARTCC (we had different positions that were combined when slow and individualized when busy, we talked on the phone alot, we had a map of our area to learn, and there was a sense of urgency making each driver take the best and most efficient delivery route as possible), or tell great stories about my felonious customers who kept getting themselves arrested by writing bad checks or assaulting my drivers. But that time is gone. For me, at least.

I knew this kid in high school once. We were partners at the back left table in Biology class in 10th grade. Our teacher was enthusiastic and always wore pink button down shirts. That's all I remember. I knew I didn't want to be a biologist. I also figured I'd never talk to Brendan again. I couldn't remember his last name because he never wrote it down on his homework. Name__Brendan___. He found me on Facebook a few months back, though. He had applied to be an Air Traffic Controller and was "in process" for Seattle Center. He thought long and hard about who he knew that might be a controller, and my name was first and foremost, apparently. He had questions about the hiring process (most I couldn't answer) and the job (should I keep talking?).

Well, Brendan was married, living in Texas, and was bored out of his mind waiting for the FAA to get around to calling him back. Jobs are harder to find these days. So he turned to Craigslist. He posted a request that someone buy him a jetBlue all-you-can-jet pass(not what you were expecting), and he would pay them back by doing basically whatever they asked of him. Ya know, fly unlimited on jetBlue from Sept8 to Oct8, shenanigans ensue....

So an internet magazine saw the ad and hooked Brendan up. Just fly 70 flights this month, on us. Oh, and don't ever leave the airport or the plane. He's got one week left, and he's tired, but seems to be having fun with it all. I don't personally endorse Twitter, but it's been fun following him up to the minute here.

He's also been writing some very entertaining blog-type features every few days for the company that is paying his way. You can find their link on the right side of Brendan's twitter page or go here.

I tried to catch him on his way through Boston a few times to buy him some Chowdah and arrange a Logan tower tour, but he only had a few minutes here and there between flights.

On a side note:
Many CTI graduates rightfully turned down the controller job they'd been waiting for after the FAA imposed their White Book on us and simply took what jobs they had acquired, while waiting for the FAA to call, as a better offer. Now that we have a contract, perhaps we should call these folks back and give them a chance to change their minds.

Till next time...

DM

Cleared Direct Kingston....

2009-09-20T13:06:00.009-05:00

It's a nice VFR Sunday afternoon. Comair comes off Albany going to JFK. Normally, Albany Departure puts the aircraft on a 330 heading so I can climb above BDL/EWR traffic as shown in my last post. In this case, there are skydivers just northwest of the field, so Departure puts the aircraft on a 360 heading, straight north. There are a few ALB arrivals coming from the west mingling with some other VFRs, so no sense taking him all the way around to the north and then back to the west and south...

"Put him on a 090 heading, mainatin 14000."

A loop departure is in full effect as I quickly clear the plane southbound to IGN and climb him to FL200. He cuts behind a BDL arrival and remains west of a BTV arrival at 15000. A pointout to CANAN and PWL sectors, "contact Boston Center 125.57" and I go back to my LGA spacing and the VFRs flying around...

Till next time....

DM

PS EDIT: Apparently, the plane wasn't done making right turns....

For you NexGen fans out there, take note: The blue dashed line is the filed arrival route, and the green line is the track flown. Getting rid of radar will never fix this. Bulldozing LGA might. Oh, but then where would all the LGA traffic go? JFK? yeah...

Now that I think about it....

2009-09-12T12:10:00.004-05:00

...I'm gonna blog about this one.

I last wrote a warm and fuzzy post on Labor Day, but that was before I went to work.

We had our sectors combined up in our Sunday morning (even though it was Monday) configuration. Utica, Watertown, Rockdale at one scope and Albany, Delancey, Hancock (that would be Al-De-cock, yes) at another. Childish names aside, it really is my favorite setup. Around 10am, though, the list of flight plans started growing to a number that made us ask, "what day is it again?" The next controller back from break prefers NOT to work at Albany sector (I love it!), so I offered my D-side chair to him and I'd go split Albany off and open it at its normal scope by itself.

A few minutes later I was settled in with my settings and range the way I like it. I was one-holing, which seemed fine at the time, but maybe I could have used a D-side after all. I don't think we had enough people there on the holiday for that sort of thing anyways...

Albany, in general, goes from zero to holy-crap-what-just-happened very quickly, and today was no exception. When you're surrounded by 14 other sectors and an approach control, well, you can get a lot of handoffs flashed at you at once!

It started off with the LGA-BTV prop at 15000 northbound. Then a northwestbound ALB departure. So far so good. Then a BTV-EWR prop at 16000. Then two southbound ALB departures come off quick, the first goes down J6, the other over PWL (PWL is east of J6, see diagram below). Approach turns them to a northwest heading so I have a chance to get them higher first. I put the first guy on a 250 heading to give me room to crank the second one hard left inside to PWL. I get a BDL departure in the eastern half of my airspace and climb him to FL230. I'm about to turn my J6 departure southbound to join the airway, but now I notice the handoffs I'm getting from DNY sector, on a converging course with this departure. The first is a BDL arrival out of FL250 for FL180 and then a PVD prop arrival a few miles behind at FL210. So I leave the J6 departure on his present heading and aim him right at the prop at Fl210. I realize I'm never gonna top the BDL arrival but I have a chance to miss the prop. I call DNY and get control. They seem concerned about my plan but, at the same time, glad that I offered to work Albany sector instead.

Thanks to flightaware as always. Pardon me, I'm still learning Photoshop, but I did get it to overlap OK :)

I descend the PVD prop to FL190, I turn my ALB departure, now climbing out of 17500, to a southeastbound heading to give it more time to climb. He falls in nicely behind the BDL arrival, but I'm not sure that new heading is gonna miss the prop. I turn the prop 20 degrees right while I'm at it. Now the high side is flashing me 3 Newarks from the north, and a LGA arrival at a weird angle from the east, converging my with BDL departure who is climbing well. I take the LGA handoff and then call to point him out to the low sector to my east, who I plan to descend the plane through to get under the BDL departure. "Pointout east of CAM, AWIxxxx descending southwestbound" All I get is a lecture: "Well, I don't think he's ever going to hit my airspace?" There is a little cutout in the airspace and I'm certain the plane is gonna hit that spot. "He's gonna run along your corner there descending" "If you say so, I don't think you're gonna hit me though" "OK then, DM" And I hung up. I don't think I ever got an approval, but I really don't have time to care. "AWIxxxx, Boston Center, descend to reach FL200 in 2 minutes or less." That should do it.

Back on the other side of my scope, it isn't working out, so I have the PVD prop expedite his descent (He's still far away from PVD, no sense pushing it down to FL190, I guess) and I turn the the departure more to the left. I say goodbye to the BDL arrival, the PWL bound departure, and the BDL departure. I turn my LGA direct PWL once he's under my departure to keep him away from the PVD prop and continue the descent to FL180. Once above FL200, "cleared direct ACOVE, join J6, thanks".

Till next time....

DM

The sun rises....

2009-09-07T05:00:00.001-05:00

1100 days ago (yes, that would be three years), I was freshly certified on my first two positions in my area, HNK/DNY D-side. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. It still amazes me today. That is one of the reasons I write this blog. The things air traffic controllers do everyday is nothing short of amazing, and I'm proud to be a part of it.

However wronged I feel, despite the anvil we've had tied around our ankles, and for all the political bantering of the last three years, I still get to go to work, today included, and talk to airplanes. I love my job, if not for the opportunity to see and do things differently and better, everyday.

And I just sealed a green envelope filled with a ballot with an big X on it. 1100 days later my employer finally has showed me enough respect to adopt a contract we can ALL agree to. As the sun rises today, I reach for my sunglasses....

The future is looking bright.

Till next time....

DM

The Point.

2009-08-16T21:02:00.006-05:00

If there was ever a perfect argument for a reality based National Airspace System, please visit the newest link on the right hand side, WWVB. His 6 part NextGen ATC and ATC Delays Series is second to none. You may have to scroll down and click SERIES. It's worth the effort. EDIT: If you just click on COMMENTS down under my initials, you'll find the direct links, Thanks!

I have had past discussions with other controllers and pilots featuring spur questions such as "Why on earth did Us Airways leave PIT?" or "Why would someone flying from Chattanooga to Buffalo want to connect in Newark?" or "Grand Island, Nebraska is neither Grand, nor and Island....Discuss!!!"

Till next time...

DM

Five Phases

2009-08-08T00:11:00.006-05:00

Now that I have almost two whole summers working on my own at Boston Center, I will play the humble role of the seasoned expert and report the trends that I have found. Controllers, please add your two cents if you'd like.....

As promised... The Five Phases:

PHASE ONE - RANDOM
As the morning becomes afternoon, clouds build and turn from cute little cumuli into budding cauliflower. The props start asking for deviations around random clouds that show no signs of precipitation. In another hour, full blown raging thunderheads pop up all over the sky. From the controller perspective, we show many areas of "moderate precipitation," but whether or not an aircraft deviates around it or flies right through it is completely random.

By late afternoon, some small thunderstorms start merging together to form bigger more obvious storms. Patterns develop, and it becomes quite obvious where planes are simply not willing to fly any longer. This brings us to the next phase...

PHASE TWO - WEIRD
Once we figure out where planes will fly, and where they won't fly, it's time to set up some reroutes. This is a very busy time. You start working traffic you don't normally work, and usually not in the direction you're used to working it. Eastbound sectors become two way sectors. Westbound sectors become eastbound sectors. Weird things often happen. Boston arrivals may usually enter your sector from the west...now you're working them all from the south too. Kennedy arrivals may have to be handed off to Cleveland Center going the wrong way (see previous post from earlier in the summer!). Everyone is rerouted over ART. Albany departures won't take a westbound heading...

Phase two gives everyone a headache, because every plane is much higher maintenance. Normally you see ORD in the datablock and you think "stay's level, handoff to Cleveland". Now, you need 40 miles in trail on a reroute to Toronto. You see an ALB departure going to IAD. You think "point out to DNY sector on J6 climbing...." you hear "we don't show that on our route, center" "Oh crap" He's filed over SYR this hour.

Aircraft on some routes refuse to meet standard SOP restrictions for the next sector. Normally, you'd descend a PVD to FL290...well, they need to stay up at FL390 to get over the line of storms. Fine with me...but that starts affecting two or three sectors down the line that aren't designed to have a PVD arrival that high. BDL arrivals start deviating east of course and now an entirely different area in the Center is getting involved.

At some point, all those reroutes stop working (storms are moving)....

Either you set up a whole new set of reroutes and Phase Two continues indefinitely, or....

If you're feeling lucky, the storms will form into a nice line and cut off all the flows into your sector....Which brings us to phase three.

PHASE THREE - SOLITUDE
Phase Three seems great. You're sitting at your once nasty sector, all by yourself, maybe working one or two planes at a time thinking "what are these two planes THINKING! They must have a death wish!" After a while, you really can't justify getting paid to sit around and do nothing....

The kicker: The longer Phase Three remains in effect, the higher the chances of Phase FIVE occurring. We'll get to that later.

PHASE FOUR - RELEASE THE HOUNDS
As the storms pass through, normal routes become available in and out of your sector again. The Ground Stops are lifted and the traffic is coming with a vengeance. Passengers and Crew have been stranded on the hold pad for hours waiting for this break in the weather. Brace for impact. TMU releases the planes with nary a restriction but don't expect the approach control to just take what you've got unless there is some sort of in-trail. Sectors run at high volume for hours on end, often at the end of a night shift. Beware of Overtime looming at the end of your shift in order to keep staffing on hand to keep the sectors open.

If storms back build over the major airports, or the miles-in-trail you gave the next sector doesn't cut it for the approach control...

PHASE FIVE - HOLD IT
These planes have been waiting all day to get in, and now the arrival gate has been slammed shut. It's coming up on midnight, if not later, and everyone is miserable. Aircraft are holding, running low on fuel and duty time requirements, and frankly, its time to go home. The overnight "mid" shift people are taking over, and after a long hard days work, all you have to show for it is four neatly stacked holding patterns full of airplanes. "Enjoy!" as you run for the door...

NOTES:
- All phases do not happen everyday.
- Many nights never make it past Phase Two.
- This may not apply to all areas of the country.
- Phase Five doesn't happen very often, and thusly, phase three doesn't happen very often either.
- Phase Four really sucks and makes us feel very uncomfortable during Phase Three. We know what's coming.
-Phase Three hasn't happened nearly as much this year as the last few years I've been around.

Comments moderated but welcome.

Till next time...

DM

A few links

2009-07-24T22:50:00.002-05:00

Well, after stressing out over the Thursday night that lay before me, I ended up training at Albany D-side the whole night. This allowed me to ponder my soon-to-be-blogged next post about the progression of craziness we go through on a summer nightly basis.

I felt that I cheated the devil by not having to talk to airplanes on Thursday...

Then Friday happened. I will simply post some links to the always fabulous Flightaware.com so that you may feel fortunate you were not among the flying public that night. If you were flying that night...well, sorry.

The following flights were all supposed to land at NY's LaGuardia airport (LGA) sometime during the evening....

MEP228
TRS512
AAL744
AAL1684
CHQ3012
NWA538
TCF7588 (this one is good)
PDT4611(This one made it!)

Till next time...

DM

What's worse?

2009-07-16T12:42:00.005-05:00

So, it's my Monday. I just made the mistake of going to the NWS website and looking at the map above. A warm front came through, bringing us a little hot air to mix with that cold front right behind it. Note the yellow circle of hell that says "Severe T'storms Possible". The northern 5/8ths of that circle is Area A. I then check the radar and the storms are already starting to build over SYR. Fantastic. There is still time to call in sick, but, I won't.

I just don't know what is worse:
1 - Working traffic on a night like this.
2 - Getting myself all worked up, sitting in my chair at home, knowing what is coming.

Oh well, maybe they'll reroute planes away from that yellow area....HA! RIGHT!!!!

Till next time...

DM

Just a tribute.

2009-07-10T17:00:00.000-05:00

This is actually something that came about a week before we lost the late, great, OxiClean man himself. A few controllers in my area were throwing around ideas for this and we even considered attempting to procure an official voice over...

"ARE YOU HAVING TROUBLE SPACING YOUR FLOW? WELL, LOOK NO FURTHER. BILLY MAYS HERE FOR NEWARK METERING!!!

"THIS IS THE SOLUTION TO ALL YOUR PROBLEMS! YOU CAN DO IT ALL! TURN 'EM, CRANK 'EM, SLOW 'EM, SPIN 'EM. IT'S EASY!!! CALL NOW! A TMU SPECIALIST IS STANDING BY TO SWITCH TO IN-TRAIL!!!

"AND IF YOU CALL RIGHT NOW, WE'LL THROW IN PHILLY METERING AT NO EXTRA COST TO YOU!! JUST PAY SHIPPING AND HANDLING!!"

RIP Billy Mays.

Till next time...

DM / DU

PS I'd like to add that he would never have done this....becuase he only endorsed products he personally believed in. With that said, they are showing commericals on TV again, and I feel this is a fun way to remember Mr. Mays.

Summer time Part 2

2009-07-03T01:40:00.003-05:00

Here is another sampling from my Delta friend taken in the middle of June between ATL and EWR and back.

Between the Nexrad display we're all used to on the evening news or the NWS, the tri-color display we have at the center, to the radar the pilots use (below) to weave thier way through the storms, I love getting the comparative perspective from the other side of the scope...

And this is just a nice picture.

Till next time...

DM

Holy Crap!

2009-06-30T16:30:00.011-05:00

OK OK OK. Its been a while. I got back from my vacation and I haven't posted for a month. This is not to say work has been boring, or that I haven't had anything to write about. Summer is well underway, and the situation has actually been more like "WHICH craziness should I write about today?" followed by indecision and then slacker-itis. There has been alot of angst around work to deal with, as well. Our next contract is on the horizon, thunderstorms are in full bloom, and there is a long laundry list of other gripe items that I won't get into on an administrative level.

We have daily overtime assignments, infrequent breaks, and when returning from those breaks, you better have your game face on. We've staffed a Tracker (3rd set of eyes, maybe does the keyboard entries, also) almost all night this last week on one sector or another.

A few days ago, we had a very typical looking line of thunderstorms build over upstate NY. All the flows of traffic from the west into New York approach were cut off, so we rerouted them north and east to Albany and then south into the NY Metro. The northern edge of these storms were on the boundary between DNY and UCA sectors. DNY sector normally works the eastbound descending aircraft into the NY Metro, and UCA sector (adjacently north of DNY) works all the westbound departures from all the New England airports into Cleveland Center via SYR. This lateral sector separation is key to safely climbing the departures to their cruise altitudes.

At first, I just took pointouts from DNY sector, meaning I'll watch his planes deviate into my airspace a little and I promise not to hit any of them with my own planes. After about 15 minutes, the storms grew and some of DNY's planes encroached into my sector to the point they would never reenter DNY's airspace before turning direct ALB where they would get handed off to the ALB sector. Instead of a pointout, I called radar contact and had them transferred to my frequency.

So, I had about 20 planes going westbound, most of them also deviating a little to the right (north) while climbing towards SYR. I then get this slew of eastbound planes going to places like TEB, EWR, LGA, BOS, PVD, MHT, ALB, and JFK. A bunch of them need to be descended to at least FL210, if not lower, yet I have departures stuck below them trying to climb above the weather. I have a TON of datablocks on the screen, and my tracker is doing his best to keep them apart so we can read them. My eastbound planes are at FL210, FL220, FL230, FL250 and FL270 stacked pretty close together. A few departures come out of ALB and they get 16000, and FL200 respectively. There is a BDL departure westbound at FL240, and I force a BUF arrival to FL260 or I'll never get him down later. All 9 planes are within 5 miles of UCA VOR at all those altitudes at about the same time. I double check my altitudes and move on to other tasks. I switch some planes to another sector, approve some other deviations, descend a Montreal arrival, and then get back to those planes over UCA. I need to get my eastbound traffic down, and my westbound traffic up, but I can't get carried away with either because there are a lot more planes coming my way in a similar fashion. I turn my guy at FL260 30 degrees right to get him out of the way. Planes start passing and the transmissions start up like rapid fire. My 200 goes to 240. The 210 goes to 170. My 220 goes to 210... No response. Oh wait, that one was still a pointout. "Hey! Descend that guy!" So, DNY's 220 goes to 210... The 240 crosses the 250 and goes to 320..negative, 280. BOS arrival deviating at 290. The BUF lander gets 240 now and back on course. The JFK arrival at FL250 accepts direct IGN (southbound), so now my LGA at 270 can get 230.

If that all doesn't make any sense, well, too bad.... I was just trying my best not to kill anyone and was thinking and talking as fast as I could.

Here is what SHOULD have happened from the start, and what we did the rest of night:
Westbound planes either come to us on a northwest heading (or routed over a fix to the north, like PAGER or BRUIN or ART or MSS) to keep them well north of the weather, so that the eastbound planes can fly right along the edge of the storms but not have westbounders in their face getting in the way. That creates lateral separation from opposite direction traffic that need to climb and descend.

Don Brown, while writing for Avweb once said, "The busiest chunk of airspace in the world is about five miles away from a thunderstorm ... everybody wants to skirt right along the edge. Well, guess what? Everyone can't. Not if you want everyone to live." Well, holy crap if I didn't have one of those moments. This time, thankfully, everyone lived...

Till next time...

DM

Here I am...

2009-06-08T13:35:00.009-05:00

After 4903 miles of driving...

After driving through pristine, and not-so-pristine Canadian wilderness (the "up-back", if you will) with awe-inspiring sunsets along Lake Huron...

After revisiting the boringly familiar tundra of northern Minnesota, North Dakota, and then South Dakota...

After sitting through my brother's graduation ceremony in Fort Collins, where the sound and lighting of the basketball arena was not quite worthy of the praise given to the technical director of the college responsible for said sound and lighting...

After the sun set over the Rockies, on my way out of town on I76, I wouldn't see another cloud for the rest of the trip...

After mindlessly driving through the farms of Nebraksa, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio...

...I find myself stealthily flying along I88 under the radar coverage of my own Area A. I had gone to the aforementioned airnav.com in the past and found Sidney, NY to be, or to appear from the picture on the internet as, what I could only best describe at the time as "The Shire."

Well, lo and behold, here in the quaint valley of the not-yet-tainted Susquehanna River, I have found "The Shire" to be as eloquently mystical as I'd imagined.

The dramatically lush hills frame a rusty steel-girdered train trestle. Short, red silos dot the landscape. There, to the left of the interstate is the one, the only, N23. Sidney Airport.

As I continue ahead, exiting at the next town finds me northbound, past the Soccer Hall of Fame, around a corner, and turning right onto the one lane road pictured at the front of this post. Airport Rd, the sign subtly assured. Its up here somewhere.

Till next time...

DM

Summer time

2009-05-27T17:04:00.010-05:00

I just watched the annual Memorial Day fireworks in Manchester, so summer is officially here. The weather has moved in...

Enjoy.

What you see out the window above looks like this on the screen below...

Happy Birthday to the MD80 First Officer who took these last week over Florida. No wonder the shuttle couldn't land.

Till next time...

DM

Weather Reroutes, Simplified

2009-05-07T17:52:00.003-05:00

During normal operations, the BOS arrivals fly the Gardner3 Arrival route (Pink line). Westbound departures (Blue line)fly over MHT to SYR then somewhere farther west. A typical weather pattern, shown above, such as today, prevents Gardner3 arrivals from getting to Boston safely, so they are rerouted over Kennebunk, ME and then a fix called SCUPP and then direct Boston from the northeast (Red line). This works out well for the arrivals, obviously, but please note how the arrivals and departures from Boston now cross just east of SYR. This situation puts a lot of extra work load on the UCA/ART sector where this occurs.

Now remember that when weather sets in it never affects just one airport. This one new traffic flow situation is multiplied by the number of airports needing reroutes, then subtract all the airspace that is unusable due to the actual weather. I'm not very good at math, but I believe that adds up to a long night.

Till next time...

PS. I'm roadtripping to Denver for my brother's college graduation for the next two weeks so here is a double dip of blogging for today!

DM

You wanna go where?

2009-04-19T06:44:00.005-05:00

Pressure has slackened recently, at least in the news, regarding proposed FAA facility consolidation. For those not familiar with this term, the FAA claims it can save lots of money by combining a couple of small facilities into one large building in a city somewhere. Many attempts to do this have been thwarted, and rightfully so. There are told, and untold, safety benefits realized by keeping controllers close to to the airspace they work. The local knowledge gained by living nearby can be indispensable in assisting aircraft in trouble.

While most cases of consolidation are at the TRACON (approach control) level, the almost complete lack of awareness of what is going on below radar coverage has affected Center controllers since the dawn of ATC, offering insight as to what kind of service can be expected when you put all your controllers in one central place and they are trying to work traffic hundreds of miles away from their physical location.

My area in Boston Center is good example. I live in NH, but my airspace is over upstate NY. I've been to upstate NY many times, but I certainly can't call myself a local. While this doesn't affect day to day situational awareness while working a bunch of jets in the flight levels, every once and a while, some VFR pilot needs help finding a place to land in diminishing weather. The airlines, and the government on a mission to save money, will just turn their back on the lowly, lost, worried VFR pilot, but we're here for everyone, and they're an important part of the aviation world. People matter, regardless the size of the airplane, even if the penny-pinchers forget that part.

So when a VFR pilot trying to fly to Saranac Lake encountered unexpected IFR conditions, he made the smart decision to turn around and head back to Rome, NY. The problem was, some clouds filled in behind him, cutting off his route to Rome as well. He was stuck in no-mans land, as far as we Center controllers were concerned. There is nary a VOR or fix or airport for 80 miles in all directions. So the pilot punched "nearest airport" into his GPS (a brilliant feature, if I may say so myself) and found 'OLD FORGE'. Uh, ok. He claims he is heading towards it, according to his GPS. So, we call Griffiss approach at Rome, NY. "Hey, have you ever heard of 'old forge'?" "Oh yeah, its up there on the edge of my airspace, a small grass strip, private field."

So, we advise the pilot to look for a private grass field (he needs to get permission to land somehow, but that's not our problem), but make him aware that we're just relaying information via the approach control who only knows about it becuase he lives nearby. We don't display the airport on our scopes, there was no information in the Airport Facility Directory, and the information on the sectional chart is limited, as you can see above.

If we had access to www.airnav.com or other online resource (the legalities of using such unofficial, non-governmental sources for ATC purposes is scary) we could have offered more information to this precariously placed pilot. Airnav has coordinates, runway information (but not the present condition of the grass strip, maybe approach would know the conditions of the fields better?), a phone number to get permission to land since it's a private field, and it even has a nice picture of the fall foliage. The FAA supplies controllers with none of this information to assist pilots.

While consolidating controllers may seem great on paper, and may work out in the near term, the next generation of controllers will have never worked at the old facility, and will only learn what is necessary to work the normal flows of traffic. But some day over the horizon, the safety of a doomed flight will depend on the long lost knowledge of the local airspace, and there won't be anyone to call who will know the answer.

Till next time....

DM

There's a first time for everything...

2009-04-03T20:53:00.004-05:00

Tonight was the first hardcore thunderstorms /diversion/craziness night of the year around these parts. I was lucky and worked alot of D-sides early on when it was busiest. I was able to fully take in all the chaos around me.

While the madness of thunderstorm season isn't new, this night created a situation that was so rare it may have never happened before in the history for Boston ATC: Miles in Trail to ZOB (Cleveland Center) for JFK arrivals! The big board showed dozens of Kennedys inbound from Europe rerouted into my area over SYR, direct a VOR southwest of us, and then back into New York from the west. Observe the glory here and here.

Till next time...

DM

So you want to be on the blog, eh!?

2009-03-22T22:33:00.008-05:00

A man from Maine who used to be a controller in my area (now in Traffic Management) had begged me for months to include him in a post of mine. A few posts back, I mentioned him...finally. But, I wasn't patient enough, apparently. And neither was he. A strip printed out from every printer in the Center simultaneously this morning. It was typed blatantly wrong, and QQ (this Maine-iac's operating initials) was plastered all over it. How can I resist?

No wonder this Metering thing doesn't work. They think Newark is in Boston. As it turns out, this was meant for Newark. At the time of printing, we'd just sequenced 15 EWR arrivals over the SAX fix and we had none left. "It works!," they declared.

Till next time....

DM

Its never too late to get your IFR clearance...

2009-03-11T12:23:00.008-05:00

I had a very different sort of busy session last Saturday afternoon. After it happened, I immediately decided that I would write this post, but I've been partially distracted from all sides of my life. I will preface this by saying I'm not including every detail of this, just the important parts. I hope to one day procure the audio from this and post it on here somehow. Here goes...

Saturdays are usually pretty slow. This winter, the weather seems to have been especially crappy on my days off in the middle of the week, although this has enabled me to avoid some of the worst work-related weather headaches. So, against the grain, the weather on Saturday started VFR (nice and sunny) and IFR conditions(cloudy and rainy) quickly moved in from the southwest. I don't know if it moved in faster than forecast, if it was forecast at all, or if pilots just don't call Flight Service for their briefings anymore. I suspect the latter.

I've been at DNY/HNK radar position all day it seems, but the weather has been nice, no one has complained about chop or icing or anything, and it has been a typical slow Saturday. The assorted blue/cyan pixels, indicating precipitation, have been ever-so-raggedly inching closer to my sector. At the time this session is underway, the weather has reached Binghamton, NY (BGM) just on the southern boundary of my sector. Inside my sector, I have the handoff on 2 VFR aircraft, 2 ALB arrivals, 1 BOS arrival, 2 Newark prop arrivals, 2 LGA jet arrivals, and a Toronto prop going the opposite direction. I own anywhere from the surface around N66 (Oneonta, NY) to FL270 depending on the exact spot. I will avoid using the callsigns of the private aircraft in case they don't want their experiences directly shared with the world. This may make it more confusing though.

My D-side gets a call from the Stewart sector (to our southeast) that they can't get a hold of a VFR approaching from their sector inbound to Hamilton, NY (VGC) at 6500ft. No biggie, he's just VFR. Another VFR, a C172 Skyhawk, heading southwestbound at 4500, advises he'd like to climb to 6500 to stay clear of clouds.

"Rgr, maintain VFR, climb to 6500 not recommended due to VFR traffic 11 o'clock, 12 miles northwest bound, bonanza 6500."
"rgr, descending to 3500."
"rgr, maintain VFR".

The bonanza at 6500 (the one we're not talking to) starts turning a little northeast of course, and we figure that's to avoid the oncoming clouds from the southwest. I don't like where this is going. I'm about to pipe up to the VFR descending to 3500 if maybe he wants to pick up his IFR before he descends below my Minimum IFR altitude of 4000. I'm interrupted with a "hold all your Newark props, don't know for how long". I give one of my ALB arrivals descent to FL210 (the Toronto prop is at FL200). I switch my first LGA arrival to the next frequency and then advise my first EWR prop to set up for holding at KODEY intersection so they can tune that into thier FMS. That interaction is stepped on by the bonanza checking in at 6500, requesting IFR to Hamilton. Excellent, I guess he needs to talk to us after all.

"Cleared to Hamilton via direct, maintain 6000, Syracuse altimeter 2983". My D-side hops on the line and points him out to Griffiss Approach.

During that time, I issue holding for my first EWR prop at FL230 over KODEY. I try to give the hold to the second one, but New York hasn't switched him to my frequency yet. My D-side, cranking it into 3rd gear, goes and gets him for me.

My ALB arrival is passing the Toronto prop... "Cross 30 miles west of ALB at 11000, advise if unable, ALB altimeter 2985"

I'm still worried about that VFR Skyhawk at 3500. I pull up the BGM weather and its Overcast at 2100 with rain. Great. The second EWR prop checks in requesting a shortcut. "unable, cleared to HNK, hold northwest on the HNK 313 radial, left turns, maintain 13000, expect further clearance 1945".

Someone checks on frequency, but I didn't take a handoff...Oh, some guy just departed N66 wanting his IFR to BGM. Excellent timing, yet again.

My D-side was on the line, and says I need to slow my second LGA down, they're holding next sector. "Calling Boston off N66, standby, maintain VFR"

I slow the LGA to 250knots, switch my ALB arrival to approach, and then realize the first EWR prop at Fl230 is turning the wrong way in the holding pattern. The pilot caught it as I did and asked to verify the turns. "All turns to the LEFT please" I get on the line and point him out to NY since the holding pattern is 5 miles from the boundary. The pilot responds that he's correcting, and just in time too.

"Aircraft calling off N66 go ahead"
"(PA28 Warrior) we're off N66, 3500, request IFR to BGM"
"Can you maintain terrain and obstruction avoidance to 4000?"
"Affirm"
"rgr, radar contact, cleared to BGM via as filed, mainatin 4000, BGM altimeter 2979"

This guy is like 6 miles north of my VFR Skyhawk at 3500, and I'm pretty concerned he's gonna want an IFR clearance too, but now I won't have the separation to do it since the N66 departure has some speed on the Skyhawk. Before this gets out of hand....I put the N66 departure on a 270 heading. Yes, I am anticipating the need to keep 5 miles here.

To the VFR Skyhawk at 3500: "Be advised, weather at BGM reported ceiling 2100 overcast, 4 mile visibility with rain, are you requesting IFR clearance?"
"Affirmative"
"Can you maintain terrain and obstruction avoidance to 4000?"
"uh.... maybe, not sure"
"I need a negative or affirmative, sir, unable IFR without it"
"negative"
"rgr, maintain VFR"
My D-side reports that we're out of the hold for EWR.
"copy, maintianing VFR, reversing course"
"traffic 6 oclock 5 miles PA28 southwest bound 4000"
"uh, rgr"

I can sense trouble, can you?

I call BGM approach and ask if they have a lower minimum vectoring altitude at that location, which, luckily, was 3500. I let them know they're gonna get this guy VFR, with their control to issue an IFR clearance.

"contact BGM approach 118.6, they'll get you an IFR at 3500, their minimum altitude is lower then mine, good day."

Hey, try that Hamilton bonanza again for SYR approach. "contact SYR approach 126.12" "Good day" Whoops.

The second ALB arrival is given the same restriction as the first. I switch my Boston arrival to ATHENS sector, and then check my dueling 4000s.

The Skyhawks' course to his destination diverges from BGM airport, but I don't like the angle between him and the N66-BGM flight that is still on a 270 heading. I just leave him on that and tell him it'll be a few more miles before I have direct.

The first EWR prop is at FL230 heading away from the airport on his outbound holding leg, the second prop is just about to enter the hold at HNK, so he just became number 1. "Cleared to EWR via after HNK as previously cleared" He reads it back. Then I clear the now second EWR via a right turn to HNK as previously cleared and descend him.

A few minutes pass. I switch the ALB arrival to ALB approach, the two EWRs to Stewart sector, and my N66-BGM guy to BGM approach. What? Yeah, I'll take a break.

Till next time....

DM

I've unchained the beast

2009-03-09T12:42:00.006-05:00

The last post about EWR metering has gotten some comments that I'd like to clarify to everyone involved. I would like to thank the Cleveland controllers for taking the time to add in their perspective.

The first point is that this is complicated, and it is difficult to get two straight answers from anyone above the controller level about what is going on.

Secondly, I tried my best in the previous post to emphasize my discontent with the metering program for our problems. I was unaware of how the Singapore flight enters Cleveland Center. I only see the departure airport, some radials off a VOR in Cleveland Center, direct to the first fix in my airspace. I was under the impression that there were numerous sectors involved (again, misinformation from above). When only one sector (and it's the first sector in US airspace, no less) is supposed to delay a Newark while the system is designed for 3 or 4 to do the work over a larger space and time, often there is no way to meet the meter time except by holding, which may seem impractical at such a great distance from the airport. As controllers, any time we get a meter time that we don't foresee a good way of meeting, we're supposed to bring it up with our area supervisor. This is what facilitated the phone call to my area in the aforementioned situation. This is where the problem lies: between the GEE sector telling their supervisor about their excessive meter time and my supervisor running over and yelling at me for doing what I felt was best for my sector.

I will apologize to the ZOB controllers for what appears to be a smack to their face for "not doing their jobs", but any and all references to "Cleveland" in the last post references management and TMU for saying "its all taken care of, just flash him to Boston". No one in Boston ever got a call asking for relief on the time. So while it appeared on the surface that the GEE controller wasn't meeting his/her meter time, the problem was really in the form of inter-facility communication between managers and traffic management. I should have made that more obvious before.

On why this metering thing doesn't make any sense: I have spoken recently, in detail, to my own traffic management and received alot of comments to the tone of "no one around us likes it, so they're trying to bring it down so we don't have to meter anymore". This may or may not be true. Maybe no one wants to play along with the game when we don't know the rules. In addition, I was told anytime there is an excessive meter delay, TMU just artificially increases the arrival rate in the metering computer, so the delays appear reduced. This just leads to more aircraft being handed off to New York Approach than they can handle, since the ACTUAL arrival rate at Newark hasn't increased. We get put in the hold, since approach is overwhelmed, and the meter times are no long valid.

Alot happens between the first sector in Cleveland Center that meters to Newark and the handoff to the Newark tower controller on final approach. I only get the perspective and opinions from within the confines of Boston Center. I've been meaning to take a road trip to Oberlin and Long Island since this Metering started to see how it works in other facilities. Boston has its own issues, and we're only a small portion of the program. Clearly, by the time issues are passed along from manager to manager, from center to center, from center to approach, and from anyone to the command center, the message and frustration is lost. Any and all comments from controllers involved in EWR metering is more than welcome. Please add your two cents. Hopefully we can learn something together.

Till next time....

DM

I've been Irked

2009-02-22T21:11:00.009-05:00

I received a few kind emails recently filled with both concern and curiosity regarding the comments I made at the end of my last picto-blog. All has not been as perfect and peachy as it normally is inside my head in regards to air traffic, and now that I've stabilized my emotions a bit, I'm ready to tell those who feigned interest about it without naming too many names.

First things first. Please recall, or be reminded of, some basic fundamentals:

- The only thing in air traffic you can count on being consistent is things changing.
- This job is complex, and it's easy to forget that.
- For all the "support specialists" around the building and the agency, we have surprisingly little support.

Second things second.

I, like most controllers, just want to be left alone so I can keep planes separated. When others interfere, its a safety issue. Duh.

I'll try to keep this as simple as I can. I will fail at this, I'm sure. Be prepared for a long post. I could maybe split this up, but I'd lose my train of thought.

-----------

Currently, in the FAA, there are three ways that we sequence airplanes into airports. First, just let um go direct and descend them to the lowest altitude you own and hand them off to approach control. That works for places like ALB or SYR. Second, Miles in Trail (MIT). This is used most often to places with busy traffic, mostly the Class B airports (JFK, LGA, PHL, ATL, ORD, DTW, etc). Third, is "Metering". I mentioned this a few posts back about seeing someone Metering to Boston. Allow me to explain.

If you go WAY back, you'll find a post or two about departure delay programs that are designed to help controllers meet our MIT restrictions to major airports. Traffic Management Unit (TMU, which is basically a separate area in the center that worries about the "big picture") figures out how long it will take planes to fly from their departure airport to the point where we need to deliver our airplanes "in-trail" to another sector or center. These departure times help space the planes apart or else the airline's schedules will cause 10 planes to show up in the same sector from different directions all at the same time, creating a complicated and potentially unsafe situation. Airplanes can't be at the same place at the same time and live to tell about it very well.

The Metering program is a similar concept, but at the arrival end of the system. As the airplane approaches a set distance from the arrival airport, the flight is processed into the Metering computer. This computer estimates the time it will take, using an aircraft's normal speed and the winds aloft, to reach the runway in use at the arrival airport. It then displays the call signs of all the incoming flights on a timeline, showing where there is higher demand at certain times. Based on the arrival rate of that airport and runway, the airplanes are virtually sequenced farther apart, time wise, and the computer then computes how much time differs between the scheduled arrival time and the meter time based on realistic sequencing using standard separation on final approach. If a delay is needed, the time is shown, in minutes that need to be lost/wasted/delayed upon, to the controllers working the airplane as a little number next to the datablock on the scope. Theoretically, if a center controller can somehow make that number a 0, then the airplane will not encounter any delays being vectored onto final approach. They won't have to hold on the arrival because the new sequence time doesn't overwhelm the approach controllers. Please note the use of "theoretically" and "estimated".

This program has been in limited use over the past few years, and has been relatively successful within the scope of its use. The only airports that have Metered have been ones that only involve one approach control and one center. Denver Center meters to Denver approach. Los Angeles Center meters for LA approach. Boston Center meters for Boston approach. They kept it simple. And for the most part, it works out OK. Metering would assigned delays evenly over three or four arrival routes.

We began Metering to Newark in October of 2008. This is/was much more complicated. Cleveland, Boston, New York, and Washington Centers, plus New York approach, were all involved in one meter list on three different arrival routes. The metering program established crossing arcs at the boundary of each sector in all these centers that meter. The controller's goal at each sector is to use vectors and/or speed control so the airplane crosses the meter arc as close to the time assigned by the metering computer as possible. Sectors are expected to impose a certain amount of delay based on the size and complexity of said sector.

A main issue with Metering is that no one really understands how the computers calculate the times. Not even the folks at TMU have answers. So, controllers received a half hour briefing on WHY we are metering, which seems great, and the basic concept was thought to be understood. But no one gave us any clues on how to actually USE the program, or why it might not make any sense. For example, if you take the handoff on an airplane that has a little 3 next to the datablock, your sector is supposed to lose at least 2 minutes, making that number a 1 or 0. The next sector may have a bigger number, but that isn't your responsibility. So you turn the plane left and slow him down. The number goes to 0, so you turn the airplane back on course. "Uh, now that I have a 0, what speed should I assign?" "Uh, normal speed...I think." So you tell the aircraft to resume his normal speed... you handoff the aircraft to the next sector... and bam! you get a 2 again. WHAT!?

Well, I finally figured out how it works. The program bases this delay number off of an arc time at your boundary, and that time isn't supposed to change. The number next to the datablock assumes the aircraft will fly at his present speed direct to the next fix in the flight plan from his present location. If you instruct the plane any differently, the number is bound to get confused and change. So, I consider this a small victory. Just when I get things figured out....

Our story begins at the Delancey (DNY) sector with mostly light traffic. I take a handoff from Cleveland Center on a prop at FL270 (its a nice prop) going eastbound. That aircraft checks in and all is well. Then, suddenly, the same sector in Cleveland flashes me another airplane, also at FL270. This new flash is the A340 flight from Singapore nonstop. We work this plane everyday, and it saddens me if we every have to delay it. Its an 18 hour flight. Literally. They left Singapore before I got to work yesterday. Well, Cleveland Center doesn't like Metering, most likely because they don't understand it. So, they ignore the delays that are supposed to be incurred on the airplane. The first sector ignores it, so the 5 minute delay becomes a 7. The next sector ignores it, so it becomes a 9. Then, the last sector ignores it and tries to hand me this flight from Singapore with a 10 or 11 minute delay that I'm supposed to give this flight. This basically amounts to a holding pattern at HNK. I wouldn't have to delay the flight at all if the last three sectors had just slowed the plane down when it was over Michigan. Yeah, we still have to delay the airplane, but slowing the plane down a little far out actually saves gas, and no one really notices the difference in speed.

So, they're offloading a 10 minute delay on me....and they're giving me a deal at the same time. It's not going to be a weak deal, either. The targets are going to merge at Fl270 in about 3 minutes if I don't do something. So, I get on the landline and call the Geneseo sector. "I show a 10 minute meter delay on Singapore 22, give him a spin and we'll save this other guy at FL270" "uh..oh...rgr"

To make this situation more entertaining, my D-side is a rowdy, boisterous controller who thinks refusing this handoff is the greatest thing anyone has every done in a decade. He predicts that within minutes, our supervisor will get a phone call complaining about this "bold" move- refusing a handoff. No more than 10 seconds pass before the phone starts ringing, and my D-side starts wringing his hands anxious for our supervisor to tell Cleveland to do their job and get over it.

My Irk'ness lies in what really happened. Instead of setting the phone down, walking over to our sector and asking us why we spun Cleveland, *OUR* supervisor comes running over in a flurry, practically yelling at the both of us "Why aren't you taking handoffs? What the hell is going on?" I calmly respond "There was a 10 for a delay, and they were giving me a-" "Who cares, just take it, they said thier TMU worked it all out, it'll be fine!". "Uh, they were also giving me a deal at the same time, I was killing to birds with one stone (ok maybe not the best phrase...)" "What! Just take the plane on a 090 heading, just take the handoff!"

So, my D-side starts yelling at the supervisor to get on the phone and actually defend our area for once. I'm appalled that I have to defend my obviously correct action to prevent a mid-air collision over Ithaca, NY. And another controller pipes in how ridiculous the whole situation is that we have to add 10 minutes of delay to the last 30 minutes of an 18 hour flight.

The situation was almost funny, if it wasn't such a systemic problem. Cleveland had been protesting the whole Metering thing from the beginning by telling their controllers not to delay aircraft, just pass it on to Boston. I was naive expecting Cleveland would do their jobs, and in the end, my supervisor just didn't like being bothered.

Just when got it figured out....
As a result of this and many other similar instances where Cleveland didn't really do their job, and as a result the program didn't really work as deisgned, and thus many controllers opposed the Metering program as a whole, Newark Metering was put on hold for a while. (Edit: On Feb 23rd, we "tested" it out with slow traffic, and it didn't go very well)

I didn't get too flustered by that incident at first. However, there were a few other little things that added to my frustration towards the people I work for, culminating in a flat denial of a facility tour for a friend that flies jets for a major airline. Apparently, its a security issue. We're not allowed in cockpits and pilots aren't allowed in the Center. Thank god we're all safe.

Thanks for putting up with my little ranting craziness. My attitude has been slowly improving this week, but hopefully I can at least partially recover from any indignation I have towards my mostly incompetent employer.

Till next time...

DM

Take a few minutes....

2009-02-20T11:25:00.002-05:00

Before I get too crazy with my next post, take a few minutes to read the Dash 8 insight from my buddy over at FL250. You can find the link on the right hand side of this blog. He flew the Dash-8 Q400 for years before he transitioned to the E-jets (thus he was originally capped at FL250). He might not be the ultimate authority, but he certainly has more experience in the airplane than the schmuck on the news.

Till next time...

DM

From behind the wheel

2009-02-18T01:49:00.002-05:00

Ok, part 3 of 3. Enjoy.

I will confess that I have many potential posts in the queue. I try to keep this blog thing upbeat and interesting, so I am holding off from posting some more negative opinions that might hurt us all in the end more than the current mental strife would lead me to believe. AKA: There has been much angst around my area lately, and I think it would be best if I refrain from unleashing it upon the world. God knows the FAA doesn't want to hear it...

Till next time !

DM

Closer Encounters

2009-02-03T16:30:00.001-05:00

This is part 2 from my new Delta friend.

Till next time...

DM

Still Inspired

2009-01-28T22:32:00.005-05:00

I have a new friend: He flies for Delta and we'll leave it at that. He just sent me a slew of fantastic pictures from this past summer as he did his best to avoid thunderstorms up and down the east coast. This is part one of three:

Till next time...

DM

Living to Work

2009-01-22T01:00:00.005-05:00

So far, my New Years Resolution to travel more to see friends and family has worked out pretty well. It hasn't left me as much time to blog as we'd all pretend to want, but perhaps its all for the better. I still enjoy my downtime at home with my cats on the weekend, and I still enjoy going to work....as crazy as that sounds.

Its amazing how the job that I get to do 5 or 6 days a week is so boringly different everyday. The fact that it is always a little different is what is the same about it. I try to smile and stay confident; the only way I don't freak out from the thought of what could ominously creep out from behind the vines of unpredictability to snatch away what would otherwise have been another good day. I suppose I could have tried to crack a lame joke by using a term "flock of unpredictability", but I digress.

My days off have changed one day forward. I used to have Monday/Tuesday as a weekend. Now it's Tuesday/Wednesday. I am officially confused. And yet, tomorrow will be just another day:

I have my schedule written down on a blank strip (I wrote my schedule ON the blank strip, get it), magnetized to my freezer door. I glance at it, double checking my calender, and determine I work a 3pm flex. I can get there as early as 2:30pm if I''d like. Two in the afternoon zips by as I nonchalantly figure out which frozen dinner I want to eat later. Perhaps some string cheese and a banana will appease me as well. My cats are relieved as I take my badge off the hook by the door; "Whew, he's just going to work. He'll be returning later tonight," they realize.

I listen to some intellectual lecture on CD on my way to work. Lately its been either the History of Rome or the History of Language. I am more and more like my father every day.

After being shooed into Lot 4 due to plowing elsewhere, I put my lunch away in the fridge and make my way into the radar room. There is a small group of day-shifters waiting to sign out at the bank of computers at the front of the hallway. I push my way through and flex in 18 minutes before three. Fantastic. I check the numbers on the wall and verify no one had a deal over the "weekend". That's good. I can always count on my fellow coworkers to keep the place running while I'm gone.

Walking down the hall, I pass by Airways/Facilities. They're doing whatever it is they do, they way they always have. A quick glance to the left and there is the one and only QQ, metering the hell out of the Boston arrivals. "When am I gonna be in your blog?," he asks. "Patience, man. Patience."

A head nod to the fine folks in Area B as I pass them on the way to the back corner. They put Area A as far away from Area B as they could. We get along that well, I guess. Or is it because we're loud? I can't get that story straight. Everyone leaves us alone back there anyways.

I double check a few paperwork details, and jump in to train my newest and most favorite trainee. He went to school in North Dakota, as did I. We have something in common, and hopefully he'll pass his check ride this week. I get to plug in with him and sit there....and watch...and listen...and watch...and try to stay awake. This instructing thing is new and exciting. Or at least different. Yeah, different. Boringly different. And I'm loving every second of it. Its what I do. And all the traveling in the world can't take me away from it for long.

Till next time...

DM

Back to the basics

2008-12-26T14:27:00.012-05:00

Thanks all for not missing me too much. I know its been a while. Between the crappy weather, holiday hooplah, and just an overall lack of inspiration, sorry for not updating more lately.

My month has been all mixed up. The center of the mayhem has been OJTI school (On-the-job-instructor). Yes, I can train other humans to be controllers now. Be afraid!

The OJTI class isn't as much about training air traffic controllers as it is about teaching strategies, learning how different people learn different things, and, most importantly, learning how to fill out the training department forms. As a group, my class took part in a multitude of exercises to make us realize how complicated our job is and how not to assume a trainee knows as much as you think. I spend a lot of time on this blog documenting some of the overly-complex situations that happen in Boston Center, but at a level that hopefully most of you can understand. I think this will help me be a decent instructor.

One session at Rockdale D-side a few days back made me realize that maybe this training thing is more difficult than it seems:

Rockdale D-side doesn't talk to airplanes (or any D-side for that matter). Rockdale don't coordinate with Canada. Ninety percent of the traffic flows west to east. Half the planes leave the sector out the bottom of the sector descending into Delancey sector. The other half are either left at altitude or descending to FL290. JFK arrivals are handed off to Kingston sector(Area E), the rest to Athens sector in Area B (BOS, MHT, PWM, CON, PSM, and most overseas overfights). The Rockdale D-side is only staffed about half the time, if that. It serves mainly as an extra set of eyes and ears, and to perform the occasional point-out to the few surrounding sectors. The D-sides in general is usually less stressful, and Rockdale's D-side is considered the easiest position in my area.

Those planes ENTER the sector in a few different ways. Almost all planes enter from either Cleveland Center to the west or New York Center to the south-southwest. They enter at altitudes as specified by our "Letter of Agreement" with each facility which dictates which altitudes and routes airplanes should be handed off to us depending on destination.

In most cases, as long as Cleveland and New York Centers meets their agreement with us (and we do the same in return), airplanes are safe. At the very least, we'll have enough time to fix any issues well within our airspace.

Certain traffic situations require a phone call to make sure planes don't hit near the boundaries of our sectors, and if there is a D-side around, the D-side will make the call as much as possible so the R-side can keep talking to the airplanes.

It was early evening, and traffic was building quickly. My Radar side (R-side) was keeping up nicely, although he has a tendency to forget to switch planes to the next sector's frequency once they take the handoff. There was a big bunch of airplanes all clumped together heading eastbound, as they always do at Rockdale, and the wind was strong out of the west, as it usually is. Planes move quick here. With the wind especially strong, my R-side literally only had about 5 or 6 minutes to get planes in the sector, sequenced in a line with other planes going to the same place, and descended to the appropriate altitude for the next sector. Then he has to remember to get them off frequency.....

As the blob approached the eastern boundary, my R-side was very focused on that one area, as he had a few different situations that required his immediate attention. My job, as the second set of eyes and ears was NOT to watch what he was doing in the east, but to watch over the rest of the sector and make sure nothing sneaky would ruin our day.

So, I took two handoffs from Cleveland. One of them was a Toronto-Bermuda flight at FL350 that was cruising southeast along J522 (high altitude airway). This airway runs parallel to our boundary with New York. New York starts flashing a Bradley lander to us about 15 miles from our boundary. The datablock shows FL370 as the current altitude, and FL330 as the assigned altitude. Their agreement with us is to deliver these BDL arrivals at any altitude below FL370 DESCENDING to FL330. That Bermuda flight is right in his way. So I call New York.

"Elmyra(NY sector), Rockdale, 30 line"
"Elmyra"
"Rockdale, FLG2945 enter my airspace level FL330 for traffic"
"wilco"

Those two are separated now. I look back to the east and make sure there isn't anything obvious my R-side is missing. Athens has taken the handoffs on all our airplanes, so I look back west. Cleveland is trying to hose us over with two Boston arrivals that are tied. I guess they just figure we'll take care of it like we'd normally do, but I call them up and have them turn the second Boston 30 degrees right to get him out of the wind a little and get control from them to turn back to Albany in a few miles. I tell my R-side what I did and he gives me a quick head nod to indicate receipt of my message. I take another two handoffs from Cleveland as the two Boston's check in on the frequency. A few minutes later, we're back to normal. My R-side continues his normal scan of the sector and I go back to a semi-comatose state waiting for the next break.

At the time, all of this happened in a matter of 3 minutes. As a team, we both did what we needed to do. Now the hard part is.....how do I teach someone how to do that?

Till next time...

DM

Gobble Gobble

2008-11-26T12:37:00.003-05:00

For those of you, like me, working in the high-speed aluminum tubing industry, lets be thankful that we are able to serve the flying public when they need us the most. For those of you getting the weekend off....

Enjoy your turkey!

Till next time...

DM

Change is Coming!!!!

2008-11-16T23:14:00.003-05:00

This upcoming week is chock full of exciting changes to the NAS. Novemeber 20th is the date most charts and procedures get updated, and there are some impressive new charts out there fresh off the presses.

There are THREE new runways opening at major airports around the country. Seattle's third parallel (16R/34L) is still too close to the other two to allow dual instrument approaches, and I'm not sure how it will affect visual approaches and departure flows. Washington/Dulles' fourth runway (1L/19R) will enable triple approaches to the north or south, and should reduce the miles-in-trail spacing we give to New York Center, if not eliminate it. Lastly and not leastly, Chicago Ohare opens their 7th runway (9L/27R). They can now land three side by side to the east or west. Due to their new airspace reconfiguration associated with the extra runway, they are decommissioning their brand new SAYRS arrival procedure and implementing the even newer PAITN arrival. All the aircraft that depart Boston Center to Chicago will be assigned this new procedure. As far as I am concerned, only the name of arrival has changed. Chicago is in the midst of a massive, well-publicized, extreme airport makeover. It'll be exciting to see what new projects are next on their list.

Not all the news is runway related, however. Area A and B, here in Boston Center, have been preparing for the biggest military airspace change in decades. The Adirondack Airspace Complex has been in the works for a while, but only recently revealed to the public. As controllers, we have had the new airspace map on display in the area for the last month and a half, and two weeks ago we all attended an hour long briefing about what each airspace block would be used for and how to clear military aircraft into them. I have been doing my best to memorize the new names, altitude limits, and combinations of each that the military will use for each training mission. Until they start using it, though, its hard to grasp how it will impact the operation. One apparent snafu is that half of this new airspace complex is on the Montreal Sectional chart, which won't be updated with the new airspace until early next year sometime. The New York Sectional will be updated the on the 20th, so pilots planning their VFR flight through the area will put the two charts together and see different, and out of date, military airspace as they cross the line onto the Montreal chart. The FAA claims that they are sending out notices to pilots about this, and hopefully all affected pilots will receive and understand said notices. Even though this is all new, we're still expected to make it all work without error or incident.

Until next time.... Stay away from upstate NY!

DM

Fam-in' on Flightsim

2008-11-07T01:42:00.003-05:00

For better or for worse, I'm an information whore. I'm religiously curious. One of the many joys in life is the realization that I will never run out of things to know or learn. As I learn about the air traffic control system, I never seem satisfied with the Boston Center Area A specific perspective.

I have about 80 hours flying C172s and PA28s. I flew most of that time either out of Centennial, CO (APA) or Grand Forks, ND (GFK). Obviously, being an air traffic controller and being a pilot are two different trades that are interwoven within themselves. We get memos from management telling us not to give unrealistic crossing restrictions to aircraft, and then rely on the restriction being met to maintain separation. Well, if staring at a screen with yellow data blocks floating around is all I have to base my judgment on, I'm not going to be very successful at adhering to the memo, or ensuring separation.

As a center controller, I don't work many Skyhawks and Warriors, and rarely do I work them IFR. My previous real world flying experience isn't doing me much good. I had some roommates in college who were studying for various pilot ratings, and I have picked up a good portion of my IFR flight operations knowledge from helping them study for tests. Over the years, I've also had a few opportunities to fly fancy flight simulators at big airline flight training facilities. These exciting moments were few and far between. Not willing to settle for the basic skills and knowledge required to be a half-decent controller, where on earth can I find some additional tidbits to quench my need to know? The FAA no longer encourages familiarization trips to other facilities or flying in the cockpit of airliners. The latter has been shut down after 9/11. We rarely give tours at the Center, although they will be approved if you know who to ask (and you're a pilot...).

I've been playing flightsim since my dad got our first computer in the last 1980's. Flightsim 3 I believe it was. I learned using the keypad to control the plane on the black and orange screen, and boy was I hooked. Granted, at the time, I could have sworn I wanted to be an airline pilot when I grew up. As flightsim matured, so did my aviation knowledge base. In the past few years, I've invested in a few add-on aircraft for FS2004. These aircraft have extremely realistic system's modeled, including autopilots and flight management computers. I enjoy flying around the VIRTUAL earth like I'm a full fledged captain of an airline, just like I dreamed of doing when I was 9 years old playing FS3. My endless need for information has helped me procure help in flying these fake planes in a very realistic manner. This has led to a pleasant side effect...

I have gained experience in regards to the operational characteristics and procedures of the aircraft that I work everyday. I've learned different aspects of airline operations from different sources at different airlines, but together, I can piece together a pretty good picture of what's going on on the flightdeck as planes scream through my sector. Just as a controller can be much busier than might be obvious from the transmissions on the frequency, the same goes for pilots. As a result, I tend to be less impatient with pilots, although perhaps more concerned at certain times. I realize that some things I say may be confusing, or overwhelming, or could be misconstrued.

For example, "Cross one zero miles south of Delancey at FL190". "Roger, cross ten on this side at FL190" "Negative, its ten on the other side at FL190". "Roger center, thanks, we can make that one." Understanding how the pilots are entering the restriction into their computers help me clarify the clearance next time. They enter the fix (DNY) followed by either a -10 or +10 to tell the computer to create a new location along their flight path 10 miles from DNY and then FL190 is entered into the vertical profile to tell the plane when and how quickly to descend to meet that restriction. So next time "Cross one zero miles south, that's ten on the other side of DNY at FL190" "Roger, ten south at 190". They can read it back correctly AND enter it into their computer correctly. Now they won't hurt themselves.

I also understand how autopilots are used in climb and descent modes. Aircraft climb at a set thrust setting, and the pitch attitude and rate of climb is dependent on maintaining a predetermined speed. Increasing speed requires the nose to be lowered thus decreasing climb rate. In descent, aircraft tend to descend either in vertical speed mode at 1000 feet per minute, or in a reverse climb mode. They set a speed, set thrust to idle and maintain the speed with pitch. Asking a plane to slow down in this configuration would require flatting out the descent so the speed can bleed off, or use of spoilers, or both. Neither are very effective in short time. I do my best to assign the slowest required speed prior to issuing descents and restrictions. If I have more spacing than I thought, I can always assign a faster speed, which may result in a higher rate of descent (not a bad thing when descending quickly to make a restriction anyway).

When flying on flightsim, among many other details, I also pay attention to the correlation between indicated airspeed and Mach number at different cruise altitudes. That's something I can't do in a Skyhawk!

Till next time....

DM <-- The nerd :)

Buckle up!

2008-10-26T00:58:00.010-05:00

Now that summer has come and gone, the traffic has slacked a little, and the lack of thunderstorms makes everyone's life easier. Its amazing what we can do as air traffic controllers when we can use our entire sector, we can count on aircraft hardly straying from thier route of flight, and storms aren't randomly shutting down high-demand airports. It's fun running planes close together, knowing its smooth and clear out there.

Just when we're all settled in and comfy with our fall traffic flows, the wind picks up, the big cold fronts roll in, and once again, we're reminded just how crummy the weather can be, even if it doesn't involve convection. I think bad ride days take more of a phyical and mental toll on me more than tons of planes deviating around weather. It feels that way, at least, now that we've been thunderstorm free for a month or so.

It all started last Sunday morning. Normally Sunday mornings are slow as slow can be. A few VFR's here and there, a few departures early in the morning, and then we just take breaks until about 11am when the traffic picks up a little and the international arrivals come in through Albany sector. Even so, its still not weekday traffic by any means. I've even gotten through it without a D-side once or twice.

The winds over upstate NY and northern VT and NH were lightly blowing out of the north. This light breeze then got caught up in a blast of air flowing northeastbound over CT, RI, and out over the Gulf of Maine. This air speeding up and making a hard left turn at Harford meant only one thing...Severe turbulence. The worst of it was between FL230-270, with slightly less horrible Moderate turbulence above. Planes will fly through almost anything, but not severe turbulence. Severe turbulence hurts things: planes and people. So, pilots avoid it like the plague. Many of the departures from Boston and around New England that normally climb through that area above Albany sector declined any higher altitudes until they where really, really, really certain they'd stay out of the bumps.

So, there I was sitting at Albany sector, taking handoffs on the line of Newark arrivals, a Stewart lander, two Albany departures, two Manchester arrivals, a Bradley prop arrival, a Teterboro arrival, two Providence arrivals and an MD80 going BOS-Dallas at FL200. In trail of the Dallas jet was a Toronto arrival also at FL200. The Manchester and Providence arrivals are fine, they just descend to FL190 and are handed off to the BOSOX sector in Area C. They do interrupt a few times, asking about that severe stuff over CT they're heading towards. "You should be below it," I offer, and they seem relieved by my answer.

Getting the Stewart arrival below the Teteboro arrival who goes below all the Newark arrivals so I can get the Albany departures above them all is the normal task of this sector anyways. Its those two pesky overflights at FL200, cutting right through every one trying to go from FL240 to 12000, 14000, and 16000 respectively, that is forcing me to issue twice as many clerances as normal. The Albany departures get stopped at FL190 below the overflights until I can vector them out from under. Each arrival gets FL210 initially and I go over the top. Just then a Bradely jet arrival approaches from the west, descending out of FL260 to FL180 but aimed right at my two Albany arrivals climbing. I start the BDL prop arrival down to 13000 right away, and give him a little shortcut to go behind the two overflights. I ask my D-side to call Delancey, who is giving me the Bradely jet, and stop that plane at FL230. I put the two departures on a southwest heading and climb them to FL220. A second Bradley jet flashes to me next, and my D-side and I opt to go UNDER the departures with that one. I turn the Stewart arrival on the parallel heading between the Albany departures and the Newark/Teteboro flow. I get a quick two seconds between listening for a clearance readback and my next transmission to bask in the beauty of 4 parallel streams of descending and climbing traffic heading southwestbound.

As the arrivals clear the aforementioned overflights, I push them down under the second Bradley. One of the Newarks is still high, so I turn him south a little to give the Newark a few more miles to descend. My second Albany departure is climbing slow and might not clear either the Bradley or the Newark, so I turn him eastbound to give him a few more miles to clear, and then a LaGuardia arrival comes in from above. I have to get the LGA arrival "swapped out" below the second departure who is going to JFK. My D-side calls the high sector and gets control for me to turn the LGA arrival eastbound. That ALB-JFK flight is above his traffic now, turning south, and then I push the LGA down over the first BDL who is now descending out of FL230 for FL180. I managed through, and curse the bad rides in the high sectors.

Since then, the rides have just been bumpy. Nothing severe since, but its just been miserable flying. Today's dayshift saw lots of heavy precipitation, spurring icing conditions and very choppy rides. A few aricraft deviated around some of the heaviest rain, but it was all very random. I kept planes as far apart as I could, to allow them to slow down, speed up, descend at thier leisure, and devate around cells that looked unpleasant. There was no way out of it, and smooth rides where hard to come by. Even if the traffic is relatively slow, as a controller I am constantly asking planes how thier rides are, relaying previous reports, and making suggestions based on my overal feel for how things are developing. The pilots just can't get enough pilot reports and they always want to look for the greener grass at some other altitude. And God help you if you get ONE good altitude that is smooth. Every single airplane in your sector will want it. But they can't have it. Not if you want everyone to live.

Off to work the midnight shift....

DM

ABRV8 this!

2008-10-18T18:48:00.011-05:00

I've been writing on this blog for almost two years now, and I'm just now starting to pinpoint my audience. I appreciate all of you for reading, commenting and emailing me your thoughts and experiences. While I do my best to project the mental image of the traffic I deal with everyday, perhaps I need to backup a little and cover the basics of my area of specialty for those of you not intimately familiar with the map I had to draw back in Radar school. While my first instinct was to simply put up the map of the airspace, that definitely won't give everyone out there instant situational awareness. But have a look.

For those NOT in the aviation industry, and even for those who are, it is stunning how many abbreviations we use on a daily basis.

The normal world uses 2 character abbreviations for airlines. UA - United. B6 - jetBlue. AA - American. Not us. Each airline is designated a THREE letter identification which is associated with a radio callsign. The associated regional carriers that fly the smaller jets and turboprops are actually separate airlines and are referred to as such, and I'll include those lower in the list. Keep in mind, every time a controller see the three letters on the left, they immediately think of the radio callsign on the right in quotes. The actual airline names in the middle are of no consequence.
AAL American "American"
UAL United "United"
AWE Former America West, now merged with UsAirways "Cactus" (Long story)
JBU jetBlue "Jetblue"
NWA Northwest "Northwest"
COA Continental "Continental"
DAL Delta "Delta"
SWA Southwest "Southwest"
TRS Air Tran "Citrus"
BAW British Airways "Speedbird"
DLH Lufthansa "Lufthansa"
FDX Fedex "Fedex"
ACA Air Canada "Air Canada"
EGF American Eagle "Eagle flight"
CHQ Chautauqua "Chautauqua"
LOF Trans States "Waterski"
RPA Republic "Brickyard"
FLG Pinnacle "Flagship"
TCF Shuttle America "Mercury"
COM Comair "Comair"
GJS Gojet "Lindberg"
AWI Air Wisconsin "Air Wisconsin"
JZA Air Canada Jazz "Jazz"
BTA ExpressJet "Jetlink"
FRL Freedom "Freedom air"
ASH Mesa "Air Shuttle"
WJA West Jet "Westjet"
EJA Netjets "Execjet"
OPT Flight Options "Options"

This is a very impartial list, but gives you the sense of all the different airlines we deal with.

There are 30 sectors in Boston Center, and each area of specialty owns 6 sectors each. These sectors are labeled using a number and a name. Some of the names are then abbreviated based on the location identifier the sector is named for. I work the following sectors:
Sector 08 - Watertown (ART)
Sector 09 - Utica (UCA)
Sector 10 - Rockdale (RKA)
Sector 22 - Albany (ALB)
Sector 23 - Hancock (HNK)
Sector 24 - Delancey (DNY)

We always use the sector number when flashing a hand off to that sector, and refer to either number or name when talking to other controllers. I tend to use the name of the sector in this blog for easier reference.

And then there are all the location identifiers. In almost all cases, we have three letter abbreviations for VORs and four letter codes for the actual airports. Five letter codes are used for computer based fixes and intersections (the intersection of two radials off two VORs), but I won't list them here since there are thousands, and they aren't really abbreviations anyways, although they can be very creative.

Lists of abbreviations are scattered all over the place. Every FAA document lists the abbreviations as the first chapter so we have a reference. Heck, there is an entire tome of contractions right here. Then, for all the fixes, try Airnav.

The following are highly used VORs that I use often in this blog and are prominent in my area:
YOW - Ottawa, Ontario
YUL - Montreal, Quebec
ART - Watertown, NY
MSS - Massena, NY
SLK - Saranac Lake, NY
GFL - Glens Falls, NY
ALB - Albany, NY
CTR - Chester, MA
BDL - Bradley/Windsor Locks, CT
CAM - Cambridge, NY
UCA - Utica, NY
SYR - Syracuse, NY
BUF - Buffalo, NY
ROC - Rochester, NY
ITH - Ithica, NY
GGT - Georgetown, NY
RKA - Rockdale, NY
HNK - Hancock, NY (yes, these are all real places!)
DNY - Delancey, NY
LHY - Lake Henry, PA
LVZ - Wilkes Barre, PA
CFB - Binghampton, NY
PSB - Phillipsburg, PA
PWL - Pawling, NY
IGN - Kingston, NY
GDM - Gardner, MA
EEN - Keene, NH
BOS - Boston, MA
ENE - Kennebunk, ME

Then, there are the airports. Airports have a four letter identification in most cases. All the main airports start with a K in the US, and C in Canada. Very small airports sometimes have numbers in them as well, which I find hard to remember. Often times, the airport identifier is the same three letters as the nearby VOR identifier plus the K or C. Keep in mind, it works the other way as well. In the following list, the VOR is often just the last three letters of the airport code.

I'll start with the airports that my area provides approach control services to:
KOGS - Ogdensburg, NY
KMSS - Massena, NY
KMAL - Malone, NY
KPTD - Potsdam, NY
KOIC - Norwich, NY
N66 - Oneonta, NY
N23 - Sidney, NY

Then there are the local regional airports:
KBTV - Burlington, VT
KMHT - Manchester, NH
KPVD - Providence, RI
KPWM - Portland, ME
KBED - Bedford, MA (busy GA airport)
KBGM - Binghampton, NY
KRME - Griffis/Rome, NY (GSS Approach is the reference on the map)
KBGR - Bangor, ME
KOXC - Waterbury, CT
KBDR - Bridgeport, CT
KSWF - Stewart, NY
KAVP - Wilkes Barre, NY

And the following are the major airports in the eastern half of the US:
KBOS - Boston, MA
KLGA - LaGuardia, Queens, NY
KJFK - Kennedy, Queens, NY
KEWR - Newark, NJ
KPHL - Philadelphia, PA
KIAD - Dulles, VA (Washington, DC)
KDCA - Reagan/National, Washington, DC
KBWI - Baltimore Washington, Baltimore, MD
KORD - Chicago Ohare, IL
KMDW - Chicago Midway, IL
KCLE - Cleveland, OH
KDTW - Detroit, MI
KCVG - Cincinnati, OH
KPIT - Pittsburgh, PA
KATL - Atlanta, GA
KCLT - Charlotte, NC

I wouldn't want to leave out the Canadians, eh?
CYYZ - Toronto
CYOW - Ottawa
CYUL - Montreal
CYQB - Quebec
CYQA - Muskoka
CYHM - Hamilton
CYHZ - Halifax

Of course, this is not a complete list by any means. However, I will feel obligated to use these above listed fixes in future posts without explanation! I may also continually update this list as I see fit.

In addition, if you see a "FLxxx" that stands for Flight Level. Basically, just add two zeros on the end and there you have your altitude. FL300 is 30000 feet. FL190 is 19000 feet. This is only FL180 and above, as the actual use of Flight Level refers to the fact that regardless of atmospheric conditions, all aircraft set their altimeters to a standard setting of 29.92 millibars above 18000 feet.

Thanks for putting up with a simple reference post, but there is more air traffic on the way.

Until next time...

DM

The Numbers Lie!

2008-10-04T08:33:00.012-05:00

Yesterday was busy. When I first arrived to work at 2pm, I was able to chill out at Albany D-side for a few minutes. Then, we "went to one" at Albany and I was told to open up Watertown sector. Watertown is normally combined at the Utica sector, especially this time of year, since most of the airplanes that traverse Watertown also get Utica invovled as well. Thus, it's usually easier to just keep them combined and work all the airplanes together. Allow me to explain:

Watertown owns more airspace than Utica...alot more. They are adjacent to 3 different centers in two countries, and it overlies 3 approach controls. The Watertown sector used to only be one sector, before Utica was invented. Utica now only owns the high altitudes along J547, which is a major westbound airway. Watertown doesn't work as much traffic, quantity-wise, as Utica, but Watertown's airspace is much higher maintainance. Most of the planes in Utica sector are in level flight, crusing along in the same direction, rarely in conflict. There is, however, in-trail spacing to midwest airports that must be accomplished, although the vectors for spacing required often occur near or inside of Watertown's airspace, defeating the purpose of opening up Watertown. Watertown works a lot of slow prop planes and descending jets flying in all directions, military jets, arrivals and departures from small airports in upstate NY, and they coordinate with Montreal and Toronto Centres - See MEOWWW.

Since Utica is relatively new to the world, we're still in the process of working out all the "kinks". Upon conception, or shortly after, the Utica sector owned FL280 and above, as does its bordering friend, Rockdale sector. This made it relatively easy to visualize the airspace in our heads. Cleveland Center has thier sectors split at FL330 and above to the west of us, and the other Boston Center area to our east is split at FL240 and above. While this seems confusing, it makes sense as aircraft tend to descend into the airports on the coast to the east.

A year or two ago, however, management found a computer program that would take a busy period at Watertown/Utica and replay it, moving the airspace borders and altitude splits around, trying to find a happy medium where, when split up, Watertown would work the same QUANTITY of airplanes as Utica. They finally settled on Utica owning FL310 and above. While they were busy trying thier best to keep everyone "productive" (on position working lots of airplanes), they didn't realize that 15 airplanes in Watertown is lot harder to work than having 15 airplanes in Utica. Oh, and the best part is, the only way to actually even out the traffic flow would be to restrict all aircraft landing in Cleveland to FL300 or below, "forcing" them into Watertown sector. Utica would not have to worry about Cleveland spacing. Watertown now has to worry about Cleveland spacing, approaches, and coordination, and a much higher complexity of traffic overall. This is thier plan, and they're sticking to it, regardless of other factors that come up on a day to day basis. Traffic from the past, run through a simulator, is now running our traffic of the future, with no real time re-evaluation.

So, yesterday, Watertown is combined with Utica, and they are BUSY. The supervisors gather and discuss, deciding to split off Watertown. And so, there I sit, at our most fabulous, newly designed Watertown sector. There is Cleveland spacing, of course, and I get to work them all, forced to cruise at FL300, the top altitude in that part of my sector (the southern half which is below Utica). The northern part of the sector is still surface to FL600. Appraently, the reason the sector was going to be busier than normal is becuase all of the overseas arrivals to PHL and IAD are approaching from the north. They are all flying southbound over SYR. The Cleveland arrivals(and a bunch of other traffic) are flying westbound over SYR at the same time. PHL arrivals are coming down out of Canada at FL380 and FL400, along side (or sometimes under and over) IAD traffic. PHL arrivals need to enter the Delancy sector FL260 and below (at SYR, basically), and the IAD traffic has to enter Rockdale or Delancy at FL300 or below (again, at SYR). So, I'm getting busy, with traffic that I have to descend to FL300, crossing with traffic that should be higher, but is restricted to FL300 to "even out" my workload. This issue is brought up to the folks in charge, but to no avail.

Here comes an IAD lander, crossing with an CLE arrival stopped at FL280, below an ORD lander at FL300, since he can't go higher than the ORD in this configuration, as per management restriction. The CLE arrival wants FL300, but can't have it yet. The IAD and ORD planes are tied at SYR, and while I'm debating a solution, a Korean jet bound for Korea comes in from the south, also at FL300. I am taking a PHL jet down below them all to FL260, as I need to anyways, so he's not a factor.

I call Utica, who owns above me, to point out the ORD lander climbing to FL320. "Climbing to FL320 approved, radar contact". He'll work the ORD guy once I'm clear of traffic. I'll still have the Korean and the IAD lander to deal with in a minute. "Lindburg 5336 climb and maintain FL320, crossing traffic". "Unable, too heavy today". WHAT! Its VERY rare for a jet flying under 2000 miles to be capped so low due to any reason. Plan B time.

The CLE is just gonna have to stay at FL280 for a while. I take the PHL guy down to FL240, and then push the IAD lander down below everyone to FL260. The ORD guy then gets FL290, which is not normal for westbound flight, and let the Korean Air run at FL300. Cleveland Center has opposite direct BTV traffic at FL290, so I turn the CLE guy left to get him away from the ORD lander, and then take the ORD flight down to FL280. My D-side takes a few more handoffs and its round two of pushing these overseas jets down below my westbound regional jet traffic. All the while, Utica is just working some airplanes westbound without any fuss.

Every one of these descending IAD and PHL arrivals have to be pointed out to Utica since they don't get below FL300 in time to miss Utica airspace which extends about 20 miles north of SYR. So, Utica has to watch all my airplanes anyways. This situation is much more complex, and often confusing (since we're not used to working this airspace all the time), and we all can't help but agree that we're better off when the two sectors are combined in most cases. The chances of mistakes goes way up with the split sectors.

It would just be nice if we could be flexable enough as a team so that we don't go out of our way to put flows of aircraft in the same place at the same time when its unnecessary. Just becuase the traffic numbers were even from a Tuesday last year, doesn't mean we're all putting in the same effort today or tomorrow, or that its safer this way.

DM

Installment Number 2

2008-10-01T10:16:00.005-05:00

Sam took these great shots en-route from Dallas to Minneapolis while deviating over Kansas last Tuesday. Thanks buddy!

Until next time....
DM

Overtaking me

2008-09-19T14:20:00.007-05:00

Ok, back to reality. It was busy yesterday, and there was a lot of in-trail spacing going on. I had a few instances that are my least favorite in terms of decision making...The back plane is going WAY faster than the front plane, but they're definitely not tied either. Do I let the back plane run fast and overtake the slower plane, or should I just slow the back one and keep it second? Sometimes its really obvious. These two times were not:

1 - Scandinavian heavy jet approaching HNK from the north. A Porter Dash 8 prop (and yet we have to space it with jets because they are capable of 250 knots)incoming from the west, both landing Newark. There is 20 miles in trail. The heavy jet from the north is going over the ground 150 knots faster than the Dash 8, but the Dash 8 is 4 miles ahead. I make my decision and stick to it. I tell the A330 from overseas to keep it going 310 knots of faster, and slow the Dash 8 to slowest practical (220 knots). I turn the Dash 8 left to follow the A330, but the wind is at the Dash 8's tail more now. I have an Albany lander in there that I get below both Newarks, and then a White Plains (HPN) comes screaming in from the high sector. I step the HPN down as the A330 is descending, but I'm not getting the spacing I was hoping for, as the A330 is loosing tailwind now that he's pushed down below the HPN. The next sector approved a shortcut for the A330, but that new heading gets in the way of the HPN. So we finally settle on a new shortcut, and the planes diverge a little more.

I have a little conversation with myself about whether or not those overtakes really are worth the effort. An hour later....back at DNY sector:

2 - This one involved TWO Dash 8s and an E170 jet. It starts off obvious. The first Dash 8 is about 6 miles in front of the E170, flying 120 knots slower. I'm going to gain 2 miles a minute, and I need to make up at least 11 miles to finish the overtake. I have more than 5.5 minutes to the end of my sector, so its settled then. I assign the Dash 8 slowest practical again and get a few more knots difference working for me. Then NY center flashes me another Dash 8, 5 miles in front of the first one, at 17000. Well well well. So I get control to turn both Dash 8s and I go to a 050 heading. The E170 is really making up ground now. So I turn the two Dash 8s back to HNK on course. Then I realize I STILL have 20 miles in trail to Newark. Crap. So I turn the two Dash 8s back to 050 headings. "I need a few more miles". Like 15 more on the first one, and 30 more on the back one. I couldn't turn that second one back due south like I wanted to because I had to push a TEB jet down to 15000 below the EWR arrivals. It didn't feel very pretty, but it ended up OK.

Today, I'm just gonna slow the back guy and vector to keep my spacing, I think. I was 0-2 for overtakes yesterday. I don't like those odds.

DM

Priorities

2008-09-14T12:18:00.002-05:00

Summer traffic has gone from an unruly rolling boil down to a pleasant simmer. The union office is getting a new carpet. What do these two things have in common?

I have had some extra time to read what the FAA has to say on the intranet, especially last night on the midnight shift. As an American citizen and taxpayer, as well as a controller, I feel obligated to step in and add my two cents. This, and perhaps the next post or two, will be off track compared to the normal theme of this blog. Brace for impact.

A lot has been made of NextGen lately, mostly at the FAA's making. Other blogs and news sources have spent much more time and effort in cataloging the FAA's open ended plan to spend all of our money bringing the National Airspace System into the 21st century.

I've never been one to quote other sites and then run wild into the night pointing out inaccuracies. I almost took a few quotes off the FAA website, grabbed a bottle of water, and started running, but I changed my mind. I don't know where to start my marathon of wrath.

Wait! Lets just do this one:

"The next president needs to make the NextGen initiative a national priority, and ensure that it is given the resources, management attention, and sense of urgency that it warrants"
-- Chairman House Committee on Science and Technology, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn)

This was part of his closing statement after being given, what I consider, a few good one liners containing inaccurate, misleading, or irrelevant information regarding NextGen and the state of the NAS.

The article can be found here. Hopefully that works and you can access the employees page.

There were no specifics mentioned in the FAA article with this quote. All other quotes where as vague as the one printed above. And yet, as I look around the FAA website, and peruse other recent articles about the future benefits of NextGen, I see nothing but increasing efficiency, reducing emissions and fuel burn, and saving flying time for airliners. It sounds good in the context of today's green tinted social fabric, and to many airlines who can't buy a clue about how to make money, but none of this is going anywhere that will improve the NAS as a whole. I have seen NOTHING in regards to increasing SAFETY or CAPACITY. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe all the important subjects are being worked on so feverishly, no one has time to talk about them.

Maybe the next administration will have different priorities than what the current NextGen has to offer in the news column.

DM

Lenticulars

2008-09-10T12:34:00.003-05:00

A few Novembers ago, Sam took these on his descent into Calgary, Alberta. "It was surprisingly smooth", he recalls. He has since moved on, from Dash 8s to E-jets.

Summer Finale

2008-09-05T21:32:00.016-05:00

The weather has settled down out here in New England, though we're getting lined up for a left-over tropical storm or two. The end of August definitely left its mark upon our little air traffic world here at Boston Center. I'll fondly reminisce about it in the near future, I think. No one died, and we'll leave it at that. If I wanted to count the number of times I turned to my D-side with a frantic look on my face and said "Holy crap, that was close", I'd need another hand full of fingers.

Leaving the insanity behind for a week was tough to do........... I guess.

My buddy Erik flew into Logan on a Thursday night (ok, it was actually Friday Morning at 1am), so I swapped my shift to work until midnight. We left the next day for a 9 hour drive to Maryland. It was the weekend before labor day, the weather was perfect, and the entire world was driving west on the Mass Pike. We covered 7 new states that Erik had never been to on that one day alone, since we "deviated" around traffic on the NJ Turnpike and went through Allentown, PA. Saturday was action packed. We drove around DC for a few hours, ending up at Gravelly Point and watched planes fly the River Visual into National.

We skipped out of DC in time to catch the Yankees beating the Orioles at Camden Yards that evening.

The next day was spent touring Philly around lunchtime. We played some ball with my Cousin Dave, and then we all watched a great game as the Phillies beat the Dodgers in walk off style in the 11th inning.

It was late when we finally got out and drove up to Queens, NY. Yet, we had no trouble waking up for our tour of LGA tower the next morning. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Oh, and after that we saw two great baseball games at Shea and Yankee Stadiums...

More Air Traffic next time perhaps!

DM

Interlude

2008-08-17T18:30:00.009-05:00

My sources indicate there are some more eye popping weather pics on the horizon. Until then, here are a few shots I took en-route to Denver last month. No weather per se, just a little experimenting with exposure times over Chicago.

Meooowwwwww

2008-08-10T21:07:00.006-05:00

Saturdays are supposed to be slow. Especially after 8am. There is little weather over NY today, so all is well, although a spinning low approaches from the west.

After the morning push of New England departures bound for the Midwest subsides, a second wave heads for the west coast. These aircraft are filed over Lake Ontario into Canada to miss the low pressure aforementioned. A mental red light comes on when Toronto Centre doesn't have any of these flight plans in their computer. A quick mention to the supervisors sets off more red lights, and CAATS (Canadian Automated Air Traffic System, or close to that) is deemed busted.

While CAATS calls itself automated, it still is not completely linked to our computers here in the US. We still have to call the receiving sector for every hand off in a manner similar to an old-school manual hand off:

ZBW "Valley, Watertown, on the 75 line, hand off"
YUL "Valley"
ZBW "Hand off two zero miles east of Watertown, Air Canada 966 Flight Level 280, your control for lower"
YUL "Air Canada 966 radar contact, check my control"
"DM"

For the ATC folk out there, you'll notice there was no beacon code or other information passed that would normally be apart of a true manual hand off. Items like route, type aircraft, beacon code, and equipment on board is automatically passed to Canada through CAATS.

Before CAATS, flight plans were passed to their computers, but only initially. Any further amendments that were made to the flight were coordinated 15 minutes in advance by the D-side controller on the dial phone line (we actually dial a number and it rang in their heads annoyingly). The 75 line mentioned above is used for hand offs, and we simply key up and "shout" to them in their overhead speakers to ask them to pick up the line. They answer with their sector name (Valley Sector). Flight plans sent to us were handled in a similar way. Departures off Ottawa would have to be manually departed by the controller with a Departure Message. Incoming flights from Toronto and the Montreal High sector would be activated with an message to the computer to activate the flight over a certain point at a certain time. Either way, the flight plan would be in the pending departures list.

With this particular CAATS failure, incoming flights where either automatically acquiring (as if CAATS was working as designed), pending departure like the old system, or, all too often, there simply was no flight plan anywhere to be found. I found myself sitting at Watertown D-side, and I would have to write down the flight plan as read to me on the data line from one of the Canadian sectors, and then type it into the computer myself, so the the rest of the US would know who this plane was.

This, of course, is VERY time consuming, especially compared to what we have become accustomed to regarding workload. To add to the fun, all the overseas IAD and ATL traffic was routed over ART..SYR..PSB due to the winds aloft (I'd be the first US sector to work them all). Most of them were not in the computer at all. In addition, we get a lot of arrivals from Toronto Centre around this time period (again, we're the first US sector to work them). So the phone started ringing off the hook. I pick up the first call:

YYZ "Do you have any info on Cathay 830?"
ZBW "uh.....negative..go ahead..."
YYZ "Cathay 830 is a heavy Boeing 772 slant Quebec, off Hong Kong for Kennedy at FL370, estimating TULEG at 2126, then direct Kingston, Kingston 8 arrival....code is...1432"
ZBW "Roger I got it thanks" (after writing furiously on a blank strip)

Then its time to enter it, as a phone line from Montreal Centre starts ringing. They'll have to wait a minute:

FP CPA830 H/B772/Q 1432 450 TULEG E2126 370 VHHH..TULEG..IGN.IGN8.KJFK ENTER

Now to pick up the next call. Two inbound IAD arrivals from Aylmer sector in Montreal, which goes similar to the last call. Only this time, the routes are a tad longer, and I ask them to issue the appropriate arrival route into IAD. ZNY just won't take PSB direct.

FP UAL930 H/B763/Q 3534 450 YOW E2133 400 EDDM..YOW..ART..SYR.J59.PSB.PSB2.KIAD ENTER

Then repeat for company traffic in trail.

Call Valley sector with two arrival estimates to Montreal. Call Toronto for a hand off on a previously passed flight plan. Make a point out to Delancy. Valley calls back with a departure off Ottawa.

DM 493 ENTER (Departure Message, Computer ID number, Enter)

Two more flights from Toronto that I copy down, I give two to them, plus another one of them is in the computer already. Valley calls to hand off that departure I departed before. I start typing in the two flight plans from Toronto, and the phone rings from Montreal with three more. I call out for an A-side (flight data assistant). I think everyone thinks I'm joking. Am I!? Meanwhile, as I type the flight plans I just got into the machine, I'm getting heckled for not picking up the next phone call, bearing 2 more inbounds. Good news is on the line when I'm finally done typing:

ZBW "Watertown, thanks for waiting"
YYZ "Any joy on a COA88"
I check and find it! Its waiting to be activated! Whoo hoo.
So I get the estimate and activate that flight.
YYZ "How about China Eastern 981?"
ZBW "DOH!, I got nothing"

And back to the frantic writing and entering flight plans yet again, for another hour of hell...

DM

My head hurts.

2008-08-09T09:01:00.003-05:00

Ok, Ok. Its summer, we get it. Between moving into a new place north of Manchester, to working 6 days a week, I haven't had much time to spare to update the blog here.

Its been a rough couple of weeks. The weather has gone from anything between solid lines of tornados to huge areas of dreary embedded thunderstorms. I can't remember the last time it didn't rain around here. The toll collected from the controllers around the center has been steep. We've had 12 operational errors in the last 14 days, with 9 days in a row at one point. Somehow, my area has escaped without one during this time. We've had a few close calls though, and with hardly a day off to recover, its a struggle to keep the focus level high.

Its been so busy I can't pick out one good session to write about.

Instead, in the theme of this headache of a post, I'll explain some of the things that cause such mental turmoil.

Last week ended with a few long lines of weather that didn't have any breaks to speak of. So, with no way to get from one side of the squall line to the other, airplanes just wait on the ground for the storms to pass their destination. This is fine, until the storm passes around 10pm, and everything is done with their shift. Some people have to stay late on OT, and help the midnight shifters work all the traffic that we didn't work during the daytime. The supervisors go home, Traffic Management goes home, and here come all the planes. Fantastic.

The squall line situation is better than what we had this week. With a squall line, everything is cut and dry. Either planes are going through on certain routes or they're not. They don't depart unless they're on a route that is going to keep them away from the line of storms. The main variable is the actual location of the line, and when it passes though the NY Metro area. Those two factors decide how crazy it will get late at night.

Lately, we've had widespread overcast IFR conditions with embedded thunderstorms. Small individual storms are dotted all over the landscape at random intervals. The kicker is, pilots can't see them visually and they don't always get a good look on the radar, due to the low visibility and rain. There is no sure shot way to get out of the center and on course. The best anyone can do is just try to space departures out enough so we can let planes deviate as best they can around the cells. Delays were routinely up around 3, 4, even 5 hours long to get out of New England airports, from what I understand. Meanwhile, the scope is filled with our crummy Nexrad display and data blocks flying all over the place, looking for holes. As planes slowly climbed though layers, they would see a new buildup and ask for a deviation. Then they'd go around that cell and see the one behind it and want to turn the other way. On and on for each plane for hours on end. We normally use 2 frequencies for Watertown/Utica, but we asked the sector around us to only use Watertown's frequency, so planes wouldn't talk on two transmitters at the same time. This made it a LITTLE better.

Its hard to convey the type of brain cramping you get when you're working 25 airplanes, and they're all deviating in different directions (although they're all trying to go west in general). There is no pattern. That's why summer traffic sucks. I'll leave it at that.

DM