A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/572176
Initiative. Retain a minimum number of circling procedures at designated airports to meet current requirements for pilot trainin g, airport access, and resiliency. These circling approaches would be phased out as training requirements are updated, better straight in approaches are designed and user demand for circling approaches subsides. • Guided Visuals - Visual approach procedures allowing for ATC clearance, while requiring aircraft adherence to an instrument based procedure. From Mark Steinbicker at AFS, the first thing is to try to determine exactly what we want to accomplish on a strategic level and not to actually work on making this happen yet. An RNAV visual is a special procedure that is handled locally in visual conditions and augments a visual path with a de fined path to a certain point. GVAs are a phraseology - based approach that transfers to the pilot separation responsibil ity but still staying on the lateral and vertical path of a procedure and if something goes wrong, they need to act quickly. AFS is not comfortable with this. • Attended NAS PBN strategy, NSPP, Weekly Service Center, JPCD, 2 Open SID, PARC mixed Equipage, PB N Guided Visuals telcons, 2 day NAPC meeting, 1 day floor, 1 day leave. • Provide files for ILS Rationalization PPT and Open SID Memo. NEXTGEN: Mel Davis (SCT) is NATCA's National NextGen Representative in accordance with Article 114 of the NATCA/FAA Agree ment. Mr. Davis' focus the past mon th has been on Remote Services. His update for this week is below. • The main NATCA NextGen activity this week was to observe several different surveillance technologies for potential use in a virtual or remote tower envir onment. o The three different variations, which were offered by various vendors were, visual wavelength cameras, Infrared Wavelen gth sensors and primary RADAR. Each one of the se nsors has plusses and minuses. o Each of the solutions presented significant leaps of capability beyond anything currently deployed in the NAS. However, the evaluation of life - cycle cost and maintainability will need an extensive evaluation. • The current objective of this task is to evaluate specific technologies that will enable ATC se rvices at non - towered airports without constructing a traditional " brick and mortar " tower structure. o Some of these technologies will be deployed to non - towered air ports for an evaluation phase. o It is logical that the evaluation of these technologies will be similar to the current evaluation taking place in Leesburg, VA. NAS VOICE SYSTEM (NVS): Jon Shedden ( ZFW) leads the work on the NVS. His report for this week is below. • Meetings this week: o NAS Voice Recorder Program (NVRP) Requirements Kickoff; Replac ement for the Digital Audio Legal Recorder (DALR) o NVS Human Factors Working Group (HFWG) o NVS Program Tracking Report (PTR) Review