A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/870884
SURFACE CONCEPT TEAM (SCT) Kyle Andrews (ORD) is the NATCA Representative to the Surface Concept Team (SCT) for Collaborative Decision Making (CDM). Mr. Andrews forwarded the infor mation below for the membership: On Aug. 24 the SCT participated in an ATD - 2 Remote Demonstration t elcon to keep all interested parties updated on the progress o f ATD - 2 at CLT. The f ollowing a re some notes from that telcon: • Taxi estimates being used to predict gate conflict is a level of granularity that might be too ambitious. Gate conflict is not always the issue - ramp congestion conflict and priority of pushback (D0) vs. alley availability are possibly going to skew taxi time and identification of gate conflict. • NASA representatives consistently tout the high level of precision in predicting aircraft movement, by accurately estimating Earliest Off Block Time (EOBT), Ramp Transit Time (RTT), and taxi time. The hu man element involved in all of these times seems to be blithely ignored, i.e. an unfamiliar pilot may take extra time to start taxiing, and may taxi far slower than the average or default time used in flow algorithms. Although NASA seems very committed to determining ground movement times to a high level of precision, it does not appear that they are doing the same in determining airborne aircrafts times. • Variables such as wind speed, TRACON spacing requirements, sector saturation, etc. , are not mentioned t he way ground movement variables are. The SCT has an meeting scheduled for Sept. 27 at the Command Center , at which time it is hoped that there will be some guidance as to near future tasking, and with previously discussed joint tasking with the CAT. T ERMINAL AUTOMATION MOD ERNIZATION REPLACEMENT (TAMR) Aaron Rose (NCT) is the TAMR Article 114 Representative for NATCA. His re port to the membership is below: For the last two weeks Mr. Rose has joined with TAMR SMEs Anthony Loguidice (ABE), Jon Bealles (A 80), Mike Sanders (SCT), and Patrick Carter (D10) for the last STARS Enhancements 2 demonstration at t he MITRE facility in McLean, Va. In addition, TAMR OSF lead Scott Kendrick was in attendance to uncover any possible risks to adaptation. Lee Moore (I90) from the Terminal CHI team provided invaluable input. This work package includes separation management tools, merging and spacing tools, dynamic spacing tools, airspace transfer tools, and improved methods of communications and coordination between contro llers. Some of the enhancements the team embraced were Inter - Facility automated point out, extended scratchpads, non - verbal messaging too l, and airspace transfer tool. These enhancements to automation are in the development stage. During the demonstrati on, we welcomed visitors from the en route CHI team for a discussion about the Inter - Facility enhancements. During the meeting Traver Albert (ZJX) and Alex Contreras (ZLA) brought their years of experience to bear , engaging with TAMR and MITRE to ensure e nhancements work to the benefit of both Terminal and En route controllers. Terminal Spacing and Sequencing (TSAS) held an Ops Safety Risk Management workgr oup meeting the week of Aug. 14. Mr. Rose participated via phone to ensure