A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/781770
SAFETY AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT AIRSPACE Jim Davis (PCT) is the National Airspace Representative for NATCA. Below are reports from the various airspace team leads and Mr. Davis. ATL Metroplex December & January 425 OPD related issues of which 193 were MOR's. On the pilot side 70 + ASAP's were filed. ZTL issuing Descend Via and then A80 giving the runway transition caused the most confusion with the pilots. Not knowing if they were still cleared to descend and to what altitude they were cleared to. For A80 on the north side, long side planes were too fast and too high entering the airspace. Instead of entering the airspace at the 40 DME they would enter between the 24 - 28 DME and side by side on the dual arrival . A80 lost the ability to apply speed, turns, and use altitude to sequence in their airspace. The Southside directional stars had very few issues. No speed at the 40 DME on the short side was only problem and A80 requested ZTL apply a speed resulting in a except clearance to every arrival while on short side. The OPD's were turned off until the Metroplex team could meet. After the meeting on 12/13/2016, the OPD's were turned on and an attempt through A80 and TMU to ZTL to dynamically turn the OPD's on an d off as traffic warranted. This went on for a week and again it was agreed to turn off the OPD's for various reasons. The main reason was A80 FLMs on arrival wall. On 12/23/16, the ATL OPD's speeds and altitudes were NOTAMed out. Use of the lateral path only on all 4 corners was to be used and is current situation as of today. On 12/26/16 to 1/2/17, Industry requested to have OPD's turned back on and requested ZTL issue the runway transition. ZTL is not opposed to this, however, due to new to the NAS and the complexity of the duals, an SRM was requested to mitigate risk. From 1/3 - 5/2017, Post implementation meetings began with all work to be completed by 1/27/17 for an August time slot implementation. It was during these meetings that we would need mo re than the 8 slots we had reserved and recommended we push back to October publication. We then asked for and were given 14 slots to implement. On January 10, 2017, I was informed that all the STAR's being redesigned will need to meet the TARGETS 5.2 cr iteria. Currently, every STAR into ATL fails this criterion. One small change to any STAR will require all to be redesigned. During the week of January 17th to 20th, redesign continued with new criteria brought to the team. With the STAR's being changed it was revealed that with the current day - to - day operations at ATL, the ILS's would need to be redone as well causing a need for additional slots (as high as 54 more) along with the 14 already. Without the slots, waivers will be needed so we worked to get th e waiver process started. We spent most of week giving briefings and putting together a presentation to be shown to the COO and Delta airlines. Submitted by Christian Karns Atlanta Metroplex Article 48 lead Cleveland/Detroit Metroplex Design & Implementa tion