media? Want to share a photo? Trying to find something? Give us a call or send us an
email. We'll respond quickly. If we don't know the answer, we'll work to help find it for you
as soon as possible.
Director of Communications
Doug Church: dchurch@natcadc.org; 301-346-8245
Associate Director of Communications, Art & Design
Laura Roose: lroose@natcadc.org; 202-220-9814
Senior Communications and Public Affairs Associate
Sarah McCann: smccann@natcadc.org; 202-220-9813
Communications Specialist
Sarah Zilonis: szilonis@natcadc.org; 202-266-9844.
Multimedia Specialist
Chris Ray: cray@natcadc.org; 202-266-9875
WEEKLY MESSAGE FROM ATO COO TERI L. BRISTOL

ATO Safety Report
Hi everyone. This week, I want to focus on some of the highlights included in the
recently published FY15 ATO Safety Report. We made a lot of progress over the past
year and I think it's important to acknowledge the range of proactive activities that were
undertaken by the ATO.
Data collection continues to be integral to our proactive safety approach. In
FY15, we expanded ATSAP to NATCA's Region X, which includes architects, engineers
and other specialists across the NAS. In total, we've now collected more than 117,000
ATSAP reports, from which we've issued more than 165 corrective action requests. For
Federal Contract Tower (FCT) employees, we started a voluntary safety reporting
program called Safer-FCT in March of 2015. We have now collected 108 safety reports
from FCT employees and have issued two corrective action requests thus far.
We also completed 26 corrective actions against our 2015 Top 5 Hazard List.
One of these hazards involved the issue of weather dissemination. This is such an
important topic as weather continues to be a major factor in fatal GA accidents. Earlier
this year, we started the new FAA-NATCA led Take a Stand for Safety campaign to
address emerging trends and hot topics related to safety. The first topic is about
completing the weather picture. We're stressing the need for controllers to share the
weather information they have with pilots, and for pilots to report weather issues to
controllers. Working better together to consistently disseminate information is critical to
improving situational awareness and safety.
Building on the progress in 2015, we have thus far implemented nearly half of the
26 corrective actions developed for the items on the 2016 Top 5 Hazard List. For
example, we've developed new content for our Wake Turbulence basic training course,
and we're taking steps to remind controllers about the need to issue cautionary wake
turbulence advisories to aircraft before allowing the aircraft to fly by visual flight rules.
In addition, we took a proactive step by hosting a Runway Safety Call to Action in
June of 2015. Working with the aviation community, we crafted a total of 29
recommendations, which we've developed into detailed plans aimed at reducing the
number and severity of surface events. Some examples of these plans include providing
