A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/624148
· National Procedure Assessment (NPA) Update – Criteria is being developed to determine how a SID/STAR can be considered to be used or not. These include: Is it an ODP, Is it used by the military, has it been filed in the last year and how many times, is it used even if you can't file for it, is it t he only procedure at the airport, is it a special event procedure, is it a weather procedure, is it a noise abatement procedure, is it a sha red procedure between airports. A lot of these factors can go into whether a procedure is a ca ndidate for removal or to stay. It should be noted that the FAA IAP policy is that one existing ground - based Instrument Approach Procedure (IAP) procedu re will remain at each airport. The criteria adopted ensures that an airport does not lose IAP capability to any runway that a lready has a published IAP and that at least one RNAV IAP and one ground based IAP will remain published at airports that already have them. · NSPP – Metroplex Procedures: NoTex has 29 procedures for ADS, DAL, DFW and AFW and DC has 9 at HEF and DCA t hat are late to late to flight check due to coding, endangering t heir 3/31/16 publication dates. Production on Non - Metroplex RNAV SIDs/STARs and RNPs has dropped: SIDs/STARs – 91 Schedu led, 8 published, 85 remaining. RNPs – 6 scheduled, 2 published, 4 rema ining. · PBN ATIS Initiative - They compared data from last year to this year and the computer algorithm detection of constant - radius arc - to - fix (RF) legs on RNP approach procedures to determine usage. At DCA , the path similarity of RNP (Z) RW19 and R IVER Visual make computer detection by conformance, alone, unreliable. A combination of path conformance, aircraft type, and ATC scratchpad field en tries was used to assess usage. All six airports are advertising the availability of RNP approaches but the precise phraseology used varies from site to site. ABQ showed a slight increase (1.32%) in use despite a drop in traffic (4%). BNA showed a drop in RNP usage (1.09%) and a drop in traffic (6%). DCA showed an increase (2.12%) with a drop in traffic (5%). EL P showed no change with a drop in traffic (8%). PDX showed no change with a drop in traff ic (12%). RIC showed no chan ge with a drop in traffic (1%). The results vary across sites. Most sites showed an increase, some significant, while one had a noticeable decrease. There are many factors that may have influenced results, short data collection time period, runway configuration, meteorological conditions, controller preference, flight crew preference and variations in ATIS timing/phraseology. The n ext s teps a re to obtain direct feedback from sites involved in initiative and continue to collect data through ful l initiative period (Jan 2016). An important question is what amount of % increase constitutes success and probably can't be determined until more data i s collected a nd also at busier facilities. o Mr. Kelly checked with the various facilities on how it is going and most felt that there wasn't much change in operations or increase in workload other than PCT, which said that RIC didn't like to mix and match RNP with ILS when busy and P80 felt that using RNPs reduced workload except for when they were on parallel ops. o Mr. Kelly's survey was answered by PCT (RIC and DCA) BNA, PDX and P80. · PBN Dashboard – Latest Stats: SIDs, Conv. 478 and RNAV 463. STA Rs, Conv. 303 and RNAV 353. RNP s, 377. Airways, V 602, J 229, 20, Q 123 and T 61. The dashboard started development in 2012 and was released in 2013 but has been suffering validation issues since, specifically showing actual use