NATCA Bookshelf

Some of the key areas they are looking at are alignment, integration and communication. They are working with other ATO service units to ensure better alignment to meet their customers' needs by reviewing and identifying core functions together. They expect to improve integration and ensure clarity in roles and responsibilities to reduce duplication and improve efficiencies. And they plan to improve communication between the Service Centers and headquarters to ensure we consider impacts to field facilities when we develop policy and strategy. These efforts will help us all continue to evolve and grow together as our airspace continues to change and will ensure the employees who count on services have their needs met. We all rely on Service Center experts for so many things, from congressional inquiries, financial management and project planning and execution to quality control and airspace classification, just to name a few. During hurricane season especially, we're reminded of how our Service Center employees are indispensable with catastrophic event preparation and crisis response coordination efforts. I hope you'll take some time to understand how your work connects to the Service Centers and consider ways we can all continue to improve how we integrate and work together as efficiently as possible to make our airspace the best it can be. Nov. 2, 2018 Coexisting with Bicycles and Vertical Launch Vehicles with Fly-Back Boosters Hi everyone, I like seeing bike lanes painted along the right side of the road because they encourage healthy commuting and are designed to keep cyclists like my son safer from collisions with motorists and pedestrians. But like many motorists, I'm a little hesitant when driving near them because the rule in Washington says I should merge into the bike line to make a right turn, and I worry about whether a cyclist will see my turn signal. How to equitably address the rights to the road is a longstanding conflict, and one we can certainly relate to with our airspace, where our issues are even more complex and growing. In the case of commercial space operations, the number of space launches increased by 150 percent from 2015 to 2018, and we predict that to grow another 60 percent by 2020. We can't continue to rope off sections of our airspace for hours at a time for a launch, but we're making headway on a number of fronts that will help us get closer to true air traffic integration. The first is our Space Data Integrator, or SDI. This tool will allow us to exchange automated data on launch and re-entry in real time with our air traffic management facilities and provide better visibility into vehicle location, status and health. When SDI makes its way through our acquisition management process, we expect it to reduce the larger than required aircraft

• Cover