A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/669670
o Change Control Board: IOC dates continue to finessed and adjusted to allow for S804 realignment studies and the deployment of t he Common Terminal Digitizer. o Looking ahead, the ARTS IIE world will see four (4) transitions to STARS G4 ELITE. AMA on May 2, 2016 GEG on May 6, 2016 GRB and MYR are both scheduled for May 16, 2016 o At this point in the ARTS IIE replacement, NATCA has been a pivotal player in transitioning 18 facilities. By the middle of May 2016, 22 of the total 91 ARTS IIEs will be r emoved from the NAS. TERMINAL FLIGHT DATA MANAGER (TFDM): Matt Bau gh (IAH) is the T FDM Article 48 Representative. His TFDM upda te for the membership is below. • Due to the budget cuts of over $60M to the program from FY17 - 19, and the IP&A decision to cut the benefits, Final Investment Decision (FID) has slipped from April to May 18, 201 6. However, there is a slight risk that IP&A may not compl ete their analysis until June. Contract award will be given after a successful FID. • It has been tasked to the TFDM team to find an additional $200K in additional benefits to the TFDM program due to Investment, Program , and Analysis (IP&A) zeroing out the runway - balancing and departure queue management portion of the benefit analysis case from the Program Office (PO). If these additional benefits cannot be found , the program is in dange r of being scrapped. • Interviews with the five sites identified by IP&A as showing a benefit with TFDM (DEN, DTW, MIA, MSP, and PHX) have begun and will continue into next week. As of 4/17, MSP is the only facility that held a meeting with the remaining fo ur scheduled the week of 4/18. Sam Tomlin, MSP ' s FacRep, did a wonderful job of representing MSP during their meeting and was able to very clearly describe to the IP&A group how TFDM would benefit their operation. • The program met with the CFO Mark House f or a TFDM Review/Discussion on April 12th. Key topics of the discussion were flexibility on the contract (CLIN review), segmentation of the program, and Departure Queue Management (DQM) concerns. • Advanced Electronic Flight Strips (AEFS) o The latest build, 5.3.0 .3, is expected in early June. Once this build completes its field testing in CLE and EWR, it will be rolled out to the additio nal facilities as coordinated. The training team was in SFO from 4/4 - 6 for the First Course Conduct and had a successful w eek. AJI has approved the Final Course Conduct, and we are awaiting final word that t he training has been validated. o PHX PHX is in the process of turning off its paper strips and will run a test of that capability on April 28th. If successful, they wil l leave the paper printers off and rely solely on the AEFS system. This would be a monumental benchmark for the system. They will then be brought up on the 5.3.0.3 build pending its release and a successful test of the system in EWR and CLE. o CLE