A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/575032
· This past week two facilities declared IOC for NIDS - MLI and DAB. Congratulations go out to them and also thanks for all of their work in getting there. The program office attended pre - IOC visits to four facilities last week (DAB, M LI, CLE, JAX) and while NATCA ' s IDSR lead, Mr. Smith, was invited to attend all of them along with the ATS Integration Manager (aka the Program Manager ' s boss) he could only get to CLE and JAX. It is purely a coincidence that the two facilities that Richie attended will not be declaring IOC on their proposed dates. · MLI had a technical issue that would have prevented them from declaring IOC fixed quickly but CLE and JAX have other outstanding issues. CLE cannot declare IOC until the new tower is commi ssioned. So while that is delayed, so is NIDS. JAX is the victim of poor communication and coordination efforts and has been for months. The communications that took place at these meetings were invaluable to the future workings of the program. Thanks go o ut to the facility reps and POCs for their unfiltered feedback at these meetings. It ' s rea lly what we needed to hear. · The program office this week cancelled the weekly national telcon. Where as it ' s happened before, this week ' s telcon was especially important in regard s to the distribution schedule of ER4 that was due to be announced. Needless to say, the ER4 release has been postponed until September 23. It has been said that the SSM will be available via " electronic means " on the 23rd, while a CD w ill be overnighted to each impacted facility on the same day. · There is still no waterfall news worth sharing. o No budget news = no waterfall news. o It would not be beneficial to any facility to try to project the next FY schedule and try to gu ess at what may happen. NAS VOICE SYSTEM (NVS): Jon Shedden (ZFW) represents the membership on the NVS project. Mr. Shedden forwarded the information below for this week's update. · Meetings this week: o NVS Leads Meeting o NVS Program Trackin g Report (PTR) Review o NVS Human Factors Working Group (HFWG) meeting; Discussions regarding the upcoming Air Traffic Early User Involvement Event (EUIE) at the WJHTC in ACY o NVS Remote Radio Node (RRN) Preliminary Design Review (PDR) o NVS Demo Co nfiguration Control Board (CCB) · Other issues worked: o Headset modification issue o NVS Call Forward function button o Coordination with PHL on controller headsets and agency purchasing process o NVS User Team release coordination for the u pcoming EUIE NEXTGEN: Mel Davis (SCT) in accordance with Article 114 of the Collective Bargaining Agree ment is the NATCA NextGen Lead. Mr. Davis' activities for the week are listed below. · Four dimensional trajectory (4 - DT) planning meetings