NATCA Bookshelf

The majority of our team's time has been dedicated to working and very quickly finalizing, quality checking, and submitting the changes for publication. We are currently working toward July and August 2019 publication dates for the procedure updates. These dates are very aggressive, and may have to be modified, depending on environmental process checks, and publication slot availability. We are also coordinating publication dates with NAV Canada. The teams from ZAU, ZID, and ZOB met in Chicago, including industry representation, to review post-implementation and concerns. Most all concerns and issues involve aircraft not filed via the correct DTW STAR for the current runway in use. We developed suggestions that industry will take back to their pilots and dispatchers. Additionally, ZAU and ZOB will work on techniques to help establish the aircraft on a different STAR sooner, and within the altitude profiles. Further notional STAR design conversations were held, regarding extending the top of descent westward into ZAU. The ZAU team will begin an internal review to determine if this idea is feasible and advantageous. The core team conducted some public outreach, specifically in the form of re-connecting with mayoral teams in the Detroit and Cleveland areas. All feedback received from these public representatives was positive, and they were especially appreciative of the process and opportunity to work with our team. We also had an opportunity to attend a corporate pilot forum for the DTW area. We were able to obtain feedback from operators of a wide variety of aircraft. This feedback was mostly positive, with all acknowledging a particular difficulty with the capabilities on older (DC9, B727) modified and unmodified airframes. The leads from D21 and ZOB will be discussing possible routing options and eventually reaching back out to some users for further feedback. Lastly, with the relatively new formation of the Cleveland District management structure (which encompasses all our primary facilities) we reached out to the new managers. We briefed the district management, and individual facility leadership teams regarding our post-implementation evaluation. We also informed them of procedural modification, and implementation strategies, including the need for facility POCs and SMEs through our post-implementation phase. Western PBN Update – Ontario International Airport – A full work group design meeting was held to establish RNP connectivity for all runways to the recently re-designed JCKIE STAR. Mountainous/precipitous terrain surrounding the airport has proven to be challenging, resulting in high initial approach altitudes. Southwest Airlines claims that instrument approaches starting above 5,000 feet require a reduced vertical descent angle. As a result, minor adjustments were made by the FWG in an attempt meet industry interest. However, to meet ATC and community interests, the optimum angle could not be applied to the design. The next step is a flight simulator evaluation by industry to assess fly-ability.

• 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...