NATCA Bookshelf

We have had a few issues at a handful of Towers since deployment. We have returned to LAS to work through their issues with great results. After hearing a few other grumblings from Towers, we have decided to return to all 55 DataComm Towers with a "best practices" tour. We are currently developing the presentations and gathering the required orders / documentation that we want to distribute during the site visit. We started Post-IOC telcons with all of the sites several months ago. The telcons are held on the first Tuesday and second Thursday of every month to provide a program status and request feedback from the Towers. The information is revised every month to ensure it is pertinent to the sites concerning current issues, future enhancements, and any other pertinent data. Unfortunately, our Tower participation is extremely low, averaging 9 sites per telcon (usually the same 9 sites). Outstanding Issues: Our TAS course at the MMAC teaches the two (2) administrative personnel (one NATCA and one management) per site how to properly build local adaptation, download data, and maintain the D-ATIS functionality. Without proper training, a person could crash the entire system very easily. Within our deployment, we ensured each site had two people properly trained. However, within this year alone, we have lost several TAS' due to retirements, promotions and transfers. As a result, we currently have facilities without their required two TAS'. The original belief was there was a need for 4 classes per year resulting in 24 seats. I believe this number is too low and must be revised. I am working this issue. Routes are a significant issue with CPDLC and PDC in general. Old TDLS used a snapshot from the FDIO line to capture data. The new TDLS (PDC and/or CPDLC uses its own high speed direct connect to ERAM to gather route data (TEDC). While this is not a huge issue, ensuring the information in the route structure meets the requirements of the aircraft FMS is a much bigger deal and is of great concern. Facilities in the LA basin, associated with SCT / ZLA use tec routes (terminal en-route control) for flights that stay within terminal airspace. Unfortunately, most of these routes are not compliant for the aircraft FMS and cannot be automated via PDC. We are working this issue with the affected facilities and working on a potential ERAM ER. We discovered an issue with a route between SJU and London Heathrow. We are still gathering data and working this issue with SJU. CPDLC allows the route to be uploaded to the FMS via automation. However, the SID and Transition must still be programmed into the FMS manually by the pilot. The FMS functionality only allows the SID and Transition to be automatically uploaded if we provide a runaway assignment with it. As you know, this is a change for our current behaviors / policies in our Towers. We are currently working though this saga and will keep you up to date. The core team and I will be meeting in January to look at the list of future TDLS enhancements. We will prioritize the ones we have and use feedback from the Towers to see if more enhancements are necessary.

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