A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/826356
SAFETY AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT COLLAB ORATIVE DECISION MAKING (CDM) Kyle Andrews (ORD) is the NATCA Representative to the Surface Concept Team (SCT). Mr. Andrews forwarded the information below for the membership. Kyle Andrews, NATCA Representative to the Surface Concept Team, participated in an ATD - 2 SRM Panel at CLT on May 10 and 11. Representatives from CLT ATCT/TRACON, AAL, NASA, NATCA NextGen, NATCA ATD - 2, and CLT Airpor t attended. He re is his report: One of the goals of ATD - 2 is to decongest the surface (movement area and non - movement area) by allowing planes to get to their gates potentially at the expense of planes pushing exactly on time. This is the ongoing conflict with the airl ines' time - honored belief in the D - Zero metric. This is going to take a comprehensive rethink by all involved, including: airline management, ramp controllers, pushback crews, and aircrews. Any one of these entities could resist, under the guise of "this i s the way we are measured for on - time performance by the government." Possible safety issue: as ATC becomes reliant on ATD - 2 technology, would that reliance make them expect ATD - 2 to prevent them from doing something they shouldn't ? Example : AEFS has the ability to inhibit "next logical action" when a strip indicates that a pilot has not received the most recent amendment to his flight plan. Could AEFS also be adapted to prevent a controller from rolling a closed fix? How would that stopped fix be entered into the logic for AEFS to recognize? Could ATC become dependent on that system preventing the roll of a stopped fix aircraft, and accidentally rolling one when the AEFS isn't updated in a timely manner? Is this any worse than what happens today, when a co ntroller is expected to have this knowledge from an updated IDS4, but either the IDS4 is not updated or the controller isn't aware tha t there has been a flow change? The determination of the safety panel was that there was no credible likelihood of any of the various aspects of ATD - 2 being a hazard to the participants (ATC, pilots, ramp). On the contrary, the increased information sharing and resulting situational awareness should increase safety. Although there are possible scenarios where ATD - 2 might giv e erroneous information, the expectation is that the affected party would quickly realize that ATD - 2 is temporarily faulty, document the situation for analysis, reject ATD - 2's data output, and revert to pre - ATD - 2 procedures. In the Phase 1 ATD - 2 ConUse d ocument, language was used that implied that CLT AAL Ramp Control has authorization over tactical metering to improve efficiency in the short term (10 to 20 minutes into the future). This is contradictory to the SCDM ConOps, which gave the 51% vote on impl ementi ng any metering program to ATC. It has to be made clear every time this subject comes up that if anyone other than ATC is authorizing any form of surface metering, that it is only if ATC has temporarily ceded that authority, but ATC still has final say. A rationale for allowing another entity other than ATC to have metering authorization power is that there is a difference between tactical metering, which takes place within the Departure Metering Program (DMP) planning horizon freeze (typically 30 mi nutes), and so is out of the ATC Departure Reservoir Coordinator's (DRC's) purview. However, the 30 - minute planning freeze window is a changeable metric, and a change could produce a time overlap of