A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
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Directors , facility managers, NATCA reps , and industry invited to briefings and desi gn sessions at ZMA for July . The rest of the month will be spent preparing for the ZMA work . Submitted by Jorge Rivera - National Route Structure Program/ACRP NATCA Article 48 Rep/Lead CSC OSG PBN – June 2016 Som e items in report are from May. The MSP Pos t - Implementation final proposals were developed and communicated to the Minneapolis Airport Commission No ise Oversight Committee (NOC). Co - Leads attended the monthly NOC meeting and the MSP ATM briefed the upcoming changes. PBN structure was developed to h elp mitigate the decommissioning of the BRD VOR. Planning ro ute structure isn't difficult. ZMP is heavily impacted by the BRD Decom because the VOR MON project hasn't given much thought to the effects on surveill ance when navaids are removed. NAVAIDS provi de needed surveillance structure in large areas of Non - Radar operations. In areas without VOR coverage, aircraft without the proper GPS or RNAV equipment may not be able to join th e GPS based navigation system. Unless radar monitored, these aircraft will n ot be able to receive ATC services. Meetings have been held with the Austin and San Antonio Airport authorities to engage with them in a higher level of involvemen t to meet the new Agency goals. Each affected Regional Administrator and s taff have stepped i n and provided much needed clarification and help with moving these projects forward. A w orkgroup in ZMP met to design T routes for the BRD Decom project as well as T & Q routes for another project involving Western and Canada. Austin continues to meet and develop the necessary p ost - implementation adjustments. San Antonio is doing the same. The teams in Austin and San Antonio are working well, as is ZHU, to develop the necessary structure for the entire area. FAA HQ provided t raining in the form of a Com mun ity Involvement Handbook. This is not official policy but it does include best practices and methodology that can be applied to each of our PBN endeavors. After each of the San Antonio and Austin WG meetings , Central OSG holds internal meetings to review m eeting minutes and tasks involved, before WG minutes and documentation is sent out to each WG for concurrence. Co - Leads met with TetraTech to preliminarily set schedules and project priorities through August and September. Additional reference products wer e developed for the MSP project. Tel c ons with the HQ e nvironmental specialist were held to exp edite the Noise Screen for MSP. We int end to share these documents with the MSP team as they become available. Central Co - Leads traveled to D . C . to work with AJV - 14 to better develop thei r Project Tracking Tool (PTT). This is an immense challenge as it is an outdated and no longer supported platform. AJV - 14 expressly wants this to be used instead of the Corporate Work Plan Tools used in other FAA lines of business. Even though positive changes were made, the updated version of PTT is still 18+ months away and very labor intensive for Co - Leads, TetraTech, and NISC contractors tasked with the entry of project data. Projects at SAT and AUS were strategically slipped in the production pipeline because of recent changes to STAR Termination criteria that has had negative cons equences affecting our designs. Co - Leads also feel it is best to allow more time for Community Eng agement pieces to be completed. Internal project tim elines have been adjusted to allow for more environmental information to be shared with each Airport Authority before designs are finalized and sent to the Flight Procedures Team (FPT).