A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/624148
of procedures, which has sh own hard to track with the tools they are using. This is important to get right because understanding procedure use provides insight into adoption of new capabilities and/or trans ition from legacy capabilities. There are many data sources such as radar tra jectories on the surface; NOP in TRACONs and C enters, the flight plans them selves, procedures and runways. These all are variable and include enroute amendment of flight plans, errors, aircraft performance, fusing of data, radar accuracies, etc., which mak e measuring use very difficult. Information on the dashboard includes: Operations count, Operations by type/carrier, Equipage, Procedures, Runway Configuration, Runway usage, Level - o ff metrics and Procedure usage. The reason we need to make sure this infor mation is accurate and validated is that it will be used to determine what procedures can be eliminated and as important, which ones can be developed as the FAA orders determine this through their processes at Metroplex and single site projects. · PCP SI - There has been discussion with this group about changing a runway transition prior to the runway transition point. It was briefed about trying to insert language into the various regulations that would allow controllers or the pilots to request to fly a particular runway transition if the aircraft was inside the 10 - mile cut - off as currently written. Some airlines have no issue accepting a change regarding runway transitions while others spoke against it and believe we are opening up a bigger i ssue. The re was a discussion about the need to ensure that better training was provided to both controllers and pilots, but also advised that controllers have no issue vectoring aircraft, however our intent was to minimize the need to vector and allow aircraft to u tilize the FMS by requesting the language change. SWA said that it's not a training issue, but a safety issue, as a ll FMSs are not created equal. Although they indicated they could make the required changes and accept to fly a new runway transition that wa s not the case with all pilots. We believe if SWA can do it, then it can be taught and therefore is a training issue. There was discussion that this is something that would be beneficial to get back on a procedure instead of having to fly vectors fo r 20, 3 0 or sometimes 60 miles. At the end of the telcon, it was agreed that more data was needed before proceeding forward and the airlines would take the information back and conduct flight simulations focusing on making changes instead of the 10 - mile cut - off t o see the impacts. One suggestion from our side is about the need to refine the various FMS that would allow runway transitions to be defined as waypoint names like enroute transitions instead of using runway numbers. This change would allow a runway chang e to occur at any time, but it could take years for this to occur as ARINC computer coding would be affected, but the overall benefits would have us moving in the right direction concerning NextGen technolo gy instead of playing catch up. Not sure where it will go, but we wanted to get it on record. · VOR MON – An issue on how and when SRM s have been perform ed in this program has come up. There was a national SRM done on the program itself and a requirement that one be done on each indi vidual removal. I f this is something that isn't happening, keep in mind it should. UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS (UAS): Steve Weidner (ZMP) is the DC - Based Art icle 48 Representative for UAS. Mr. Weidner is assisted by Jeff Richards (ZAU). Below is the UAS report for this week.