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
All Things ATCA
Hi everyone. This week, I spoke at the Air Traffic Control Association conference at
National Harbor, Maryland. I discussed much of the recent progress we've made to
improve NAS performance, deploy NextGen and integrate drones and rockets into the
NAS.
In support of NAS performance, we've worked to mitigate safety risk and improve air
traffic efficiency. We developed 26 corrective actions to address our Fiscal Year 2016
Top 5 Hazards. In August, we started a nationwide initiative called PERTI (Plan, Execute,
Review, Train and Improve), an effort to look at how NAS resources, processes and
systems are managed and how they can be improved.
We've also achieved many milestones toward NextGen modernization. As part of TAMR,
we completed automation upgrades at our 11 largest TRACONs - on time, within budget,
and in collaboration with labor and industry. We're in the process of publishing PBN
procedures in Charlotte and Atlanta, and we recently published our PBN NAS Navigation
strategy, a 15-year plan to transition to PBN as the primary means of navigation in the
United States.
Air carriers have agreed to provide 11 kinds of surface data that can help us make
surface operations more efficient. These efforts will be leveraged into our Terminal Flight
Data Manager program, which we will start implementing at airports in 2019.
We've safely reduced wake separation standards at 27 airports, reducing taxi and
approach times, and aircraft fuel usage and emissions. We've deployed Data
Communications departure clearance service at 50 control towers, and we're 24 months
ahead of schedule.
With regard to drones and rockets, we continue to phase in authorization of small
unmanned aircraft use into the different airspace classes as we work with the FAA's new
Drone Advisory Committee to prioritize and address the full range of issues affecting
UAS integration. We expect to soon complete our Commercial Space Integration
Roadmap that will define changes in airspace usage policy, regulation, procedures and
