A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/1104355
Three airports lead the country with CPDLC clearances accounting for over 77 percent of their IFR departures. These airports are KDAL with 77.7 percent, and KMDW and KHOU with 77.6 percent. En route keysites, ZKC and ZID, have started back up with DataComm Functional Verification. Before the government shutdown, there were fixes required for the communication service provider (CSP) to improve message delivery. Initial testing of message delivery appears to have significantly improved the system. There were also some airline avionics that required updates to improve message delivery as well. Those aircraft have been removed from participation until the updates can be verified. Both sites are continuing to test and plan to increase operational times as we progress. Initial controller sentiment is that the system performance appears to be much better, but they want more equipped aircraft. Additionally, due to avionics issues that were discovered during initial testing, SWA was removed from participating in en route airspace. The Program Office is working with SWA to address their avionics issues and participate as soon as possible. Hopefully we can have them up and running by the end of the year, with some initial aircraft coming on board in a few months. The National DataComm workgroup continues to work on a revised waterfall that will accommodate all stakeholders. The group is reaching out to facilities, other programs, and tech refresh leads to harmonize a schedule that will work for all. This activity should hopefully be completed over the next month. EN ROUTE AUTOMATION WORKGROUP (ERAW) Julio Henriques (ZNY) leads the ERAW efforts for NATCA. Rex Jackson (ZDC) provides the report below: The facility tech reps have worked with their sites to up-level to the EAE130 ERAM release. This is the first time since ERAM was deployed that all sites have been on the same ERAM software release. With all sites on EAE130, the CPDLC enhanced timers were enabled on March 28 in support of better DataComm functionality for the keysites. The timers will also reduce confusion to the cockpit on when action should be taken to be eligible to receive CPDLC clearances. Testing of the proposed PDRR fix failed to deliver the intended outcome and address all of the iterations that needed to be fixed. The task team worked on new problem statement language and will retest the software fix in April to be included in the EAE200 ERAM software release currently scheduled for June 2019. If testing is successful, sites will be able to enable PDRR after accomplishing dual channel ops on EAE200. Different groups of FTRs have worked at the Tech Center over the past five weeks to develop a trackball solution in support of R-side tech refresh. The new Linux processors changed the speed and accuracy of the trackball movement and were not usable in the current state. The group worked directly with SLE and Leidos engineers to create three