A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/872987
also participated in the testing. Matt and I were there to ensure that TBFM does not suffer adverse impacts from the ATD - 2 interface and that ATD - 2 functions in the way we believe it should. Here are the main highlights of what the testing re vealed: One component of the ATD - 2 system emulates the FAA ' s own Integrated Departure Arrival Capability (IDAC) function. IDAC is a feature of the TBFM system that allows adapted air traffic control towers to request releases from ARTCC s through the use of an automated interface. This feature eliminates inefficient and time consuming voice calls over landlines and also provides terminal facilities greater insight into what release times are available for aircraft destined to constrained locations. This gr eater insight allows both terminals and ARTCCs to be more efficient. Greater efficiency, in this regard, means better planning and execution of throughput at terminal facilities and less deleterious effects on merging departures into established overhead s treams for our en - route controllers. The following issues were identified during testing: After swapping two scheduled departures on the TBFM side, STBO required acknowledgement of the swap and displayed two acknowledgement diamonds. However, only the fi rst acknowledgement diamond could be removed after it was clicked. The second could be clicked but remained on the STBO. This was tested for both semi - automatic and automatic APREQ types. NASA to investigate. Departure runways between TBFM and STBO were o ccasionally inconsistent with the current departure runway. TBFM's default departure configuration for CLT on the ZDC EDC timeline is South (RWY 18L). However, some runways for unscheduled flights matched the STBO, and real world, configuration of North (R WY 36R). After scheduling, some flights would revert to South (RWY18L) as the departure runway, which was incorrect for the settings in the test environment. Actual RWY information is passed from the STBO to TBFM. So further analysis of this inconsistency is required. Proposed workaround at this time would be to verify that TBFM departure runway configuration at ZDC matches CLT's actual configuration (i.e.; North or South). If a constraint set by TBFM were high enough to produce all "red space" on the STBO timeline, nothing would show as if the request from TBFM DP did not return the available space. After easing off the constraints and a small amount of departure space (green) was available, then the timeline displayed the proper red space/green space. Thi s may be a graphical issue on the STBO side. NASA to investigate. ATD - 2 may not have all IDAC - like capabilities ready on the proposed ' go - live ' date of September 29th, but these features are expected to become available within a few weeks or months after that. Chief among the features we wish to see implemented are: The ability to reschedule aircraft via the NASA ATD - 2 STBO interface, and t he ability to swap two departures going to the same destination via the STBO. Both of these features are available th rough the FAA ' s IDAC interface and we believe they should be available from within the NASA ATD - 2 interface also. This is already high on NASA's list of enhancements to the current baseline system and NASA engineers are working hard to provide them as soon as possible. Training of TMCs at CLT is scheduled to be complete d by Sept. 28th. It is believed that training of all CLT airport Ramp personnel will be complete by that time also. Training for