NATCA Bookshelf

SAFETY AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Update for the Week of Dec. 10, 2018 ATO OPERATIONAL CONTINGENCY GROUP (ATOC) Jason Grider (ZFW) is the ATO Article 114 Representative and the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Representative. His report is below: The Contingency Operations group met with the national ATOP workgroup at the WJHTC to continue work on contingency plans for ZOA and ZAN oceanic airspace. The plans right now call for controllers to work the airspace non-RADAR with strips. It was decided that this is not a good option and they need a better plan. The group scheduled a two-week workgroup meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, to work through both facilities plans. Since the ideas being looked at require each facility to support each other during an ATC-zero event, there will be representatives from each facility onsite. The group has begun reaching out to ZTL to schedule an initial visit to begin work on their plans. The training workgroup has completed work on a training video to introduce controllers to contingency plans and what would be required of them if it were ever enacted. The video will be a part of recurrent training beginning next year. Mr. Grider joined a team on an introductory site visit to ZNY as a kickoff to reworking their plans. ZNY NATCA members and management were very helpful in giving them insight into the many challenges their unique airspace has. The group met with N90 on Dec. 12 to gather information on how they can support ZNY in their plans. DATACOMM Chad Geyer (ZLA) is the Article 114 Representative for DataComm. His report is below: Controller Pilot Data Link Communication (CPDLC) sites are now sending over 52,000 clearances a week. All sites are on Version 12.5. Version 12.6 is planned to be deployed to key sites on Apr. 2, and deployment to the remaining sites the following week, assuming the build passes key site acceptability. Version 12.6 not only provides fixes and enhancements for towers, but also provides support for Center Tech Refresh for certain processors that interact with TDLS. The program office is working with IFCET (Inter-Facility Communication Engineering Team), the support team for TDLS, to take over the work that the program office has been doing. There has even been a request from IFCET to provide an Article 114 Representative to assist with: • Trouble Reports: Tracking, ranking, and deployment • Enhancement Requests: Tracking, ranking, and deployment • Future Enhancements to D-ATIS and FDIO Emulation: IFCET is planning to deploy a new D-ATIS, hardware and software in 2019 • Interface with TFDM: This will include functionality and CHI changes

• Cover
• ERAW received a briefing from Second Level Engineering and the Program Office on the Alternate Display Path in support of R-side Tech Refresh. The goal is to allow the AIX processor to provide data to the glass in the event of an MDM failure due to th...
• SE2 Use Case Updates
• o 4th Line – The team reached agreement on the 4th Line use case referencing the ON/OFF switch functionality. Once all team members concur, the use case will be sent to SLE.
• o Airspace Transfer – The team discussed the changes to the use case and a section was added for the "Push" function. The team also decided that language should be added to capture review of national procedures.
• DataComm CHI
• o The uplink type for Speed and Route Generic Uplinks was discussed. A recommendation was made to modify the classification of the Confirm Speed (uM134) and Confirm Assigned Route uplinks from Temporary Generic Uplinks to Permanent Generic Uplinks. Th...
• ER 195554 AHI and Point Outs
• o The team reviewed and reached agreement on the problem statement, "The desired behavior is to add system functionality that will insert an AHI (Auto Handoff Inhibit) for an aircraft from the initiating sector to the receiving sector after the receiv...
• ER 194653 Pending Font and Brightness
• o The team discussed and reached consensus on the problem statement, "Its desired behavior is to change the button functions on the SAA Filter Menu so that both hot and pending airspaces can be changed independently."
• Altimeter CAR
• o The team discussed updating altimeters at a more frequent rate. A task team has been created to work the issue with SLE and respond to the CAR.
• ER 186070 Weather Updates
• o The ER describes a situation where the weather report for a specific station did not update and the old weather remained displayed. A draft problem statement will be created with a desired behavior of reporting weather observations as missing, if th...
• PDRR/ABRR
• o Critical AIMS 196440 was written against PDRR and a software fix is needed to correct the issue. The ERAM fix will be delivered in April 2019, and the TFMS fix in 2020 or later. The initial suggestion is to disable PDRR at the facility level until t...