A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/633543
SAFETY AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT AIRSPACE TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATION (ATD - 2): Pete Slattery (CLT) is the Article 48 Representative for this NASA led project. His report for the week is below. • Had a very good few days out at NASA Ames last week working on ATD - 2. Kevin McLaughlin (NextGen Representative) and Scott Conde (ZOA FacRep) were there also. Both cont ributed significantly to the discussion and NATCA's overall presence at the event. • There seems to be some dispute as to Mr. Slattery's status as an Article 48 Rep on ATD - 2. The dispute is whether he is a full - fledged Article 48 Rep or merely an SME. The department provided documentation where Mr. Slattery was named as the Article 48 Representative to ATD - 2 in a September 12, 2015 letter to the Agency. • Mr. Slattery has been made aware of meetings concerning ATD - 2 occurring at FAA headquarters that he was n ot made aware of until after they have taken place. o This may have been due to there are those who believe that if Mr. Slattery is simply an SME on this, then they will only seek NATCA's involvement when they deem it appropriate. o This is not the spirit wi th which NATCA believes we were collaborating under for this activity. COLLABORATIVE DECISION MAKING (CDM): Ron Foley (ZOB) is the Article 48 Representative for CDM. Mr. Foley and the other CDM Team members provided the information below for this update . • SCT (Surface Concept Team): Kyle Andrews, CDM Representative for Surface Concept Team, attended the Las Vegas Airport Collaborative Site Implementation Team (CSIT) meeting on January 11 and 12, visiting Southwest Operations, Swissport Operations, and LAS ramp towers. The following is his report: o General Aviation and Unscheduled Demand: Although all airports have their idiosyncrasies, LAS Airport is unlike any other Top 10 airport because of the high volume of General Aviation aircraft. Where a typical high volume airport might have as high as five percent GA traffic, LAS has on a typical day fifteen to twenty percent GA traffic making up their daily operations, and on an event weekend, possibly forty percent GA traffic. The term for thi s in Surface Metering is "unscheduled demand". Some thoughts on how to handle it: unscheduled demand does not mean unpredicted demand. Typically an airport knows in advance that a GA dependent event will happen, and have a reasonable estimate for the time frame. During the predicted GA push, the metering queue could create GA slots that represent a spot in the queue for any plane, and those slots would be assigned on a first come, first served basis. The time could be relayed by a FBO, or possibly an airpor t entity (ramp tower, ATC tower) could open a designated "metering information" frequency for the GA's to receive their metering time. The challenge will be getting the VIPs on the GA flights to understand that they will not be able to be catered to