A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/738498
As a reminder, the agency is c onducting weekly telcon/webinars that are available for all employees to answer questions about the new rule and its implementation. The calls occur at 1pm Eastern Time and are repeated weekly, on Wednesdays, through December 21st. Mr. Weidner and Mr. Rich ards will be participating in these calls. Here is the lin k to register : https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3378736936558080770 . Additionally, Mr. Weidner and Mr. Richar ds can be reach ed for questions on the small rule at Part107@natca.net . The Future of small UAS Approval Process The FAA is working toward a process where UAS authorizations can be approved via an app - based or web - based system. Mr. Weidner and Mr. Richards have worked with the agency to define the requir ements for an approval system. This process is in the beginning stages and Mr. Weidner and Mr. Richards are working with the agency as they move forward with this pr oject. Drone Advisory Committee (DAC) The first meeting of the Drone Advisory Committee (DAC) was held September 16th in Washington , D .C. The DAC is composed of 35 members of industry and government and will advise the FAA on the future of drone policy. N ATCA's Executive Vice - President, Trish Gilbert , is a member of the DAC. WAKE TURBULENCE : Kevin Connelly (SAT) is the Article 48 Representative to the W ake Turbulence Office for NATCA. His update for the week is below. At the start of September , we were i n the middle of the training process for RECAT 2.0 at SCT and associated towers. The first week was spent training LAX/SAN towers and also testing of Phase 2.0 on STARS at SCT. The training at the two major towers went with no major issues and the testing only had one minor issue with Category G updates but it was resolved onsite and fixed within an hour. The second week had training at the rest of the assoc iated towers including ONT, BUR, and lastly SNA. SNA (John Wayne) ran into a big issue after HSI beg an the training onsite and a potential issue was discovered. During the SRMD for reducing separations behind the B757 on parallel runways separated by less the 2500ft the data used was from SFO and LAX whose parallel runways are 750 and 700ft apart respect ively. SNA has parallel runways that are only 500ft apart and the safety risk that was assessed was only down to 700ft apart and inside of that distance we believe it would have to be treated as same runway and require wake separation. After reviewing ove r the SRMD documents and reconvening the panel for this question over email it was determined that safety for wake requirements was only down to 700ft parallels. At this point it was determined to stop training at SNA and make that facility a non - recat fac ility. This was discovered and determined Tuesday before IOC , which was scheduled for the following Monday. Obviously this caused some issues with LOAs and how operations would be run. There was a meeting on Friday the 22nd and a temporary patch of 5 MIT f or all aircraft landing SNA was instituted until a further solution could be worked out. The initial issue is that this is a Class C airspace tower and those airports always tend to go RECAT because of continuity of the larger airports.