A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/895825
adaptations at ZAU were looked at and discussions were held about utilizing ED C and also future Adjacent Cen ter Scheduling to DTW and MSP. A plan moving forward for adaptation work and possible TBFM training/implementation was agreed upon for the be ginning of calendar year 2018. Thanks to ZAU NATCA President Toby Hauck for having th e TBFM Ops Team at ZAU and for having productive discussions on how TBFM can be most useful for ZAU. The same week of 10/10, members of the TBFM Ops Team training group travelled to OKC to work on the TB FM training course curriculum. This meeting was no t only to update the class material but also to run through and update the scenarios in the class. The work by the training group continues to pay dividends as the latest report of the 17 TBFM classes held in FY2017 s howed a 99.7% positive review. NATCA m embers of the TBFM training team will continue to work on the course material to ensure that it is meeting the needs of the field personnel that are utilizing the TBFM equipment. The week of 10/16 an Operations Evaluation of what will be the newest updat e of the TBFM system (4.8) was he ld in Atlantic City at Leidos. This was the second look at the 4.8 system by the TBFM Ops team and this was held to verify fixes of issues seen in the first evaluation. Specifically, there was a lot of fixes needed to ensur e that IDAC will continue to work smoothl y with an upcoming Java update. This second Eval went well and the few regression items seen were tagged to be fixed prior to the release of 4.8. During the week of 10/6, Ops Team members visited ZME, ZID, and ZKC to assist with the implementation of MEM mid - s hift Adjacent Center metering. This was a project that the Ops Team has been assisting with over the last 6 - 8 months and involved not only the above mentioned Cente rs but also ZTL, ZFW, and ZHU. Ops Team member s were at ZME, ZID, ZKC assisting controllers with metering times and TMC's with t he overall metering operation. The ZME Adjacent Center metering implementation went very well overall and it appears that there will be continued support of its use in the fu ture. The last full week of October, Ops team members visited ZMA to continue support of adaptation work with ZMA and Miami TRACON for even tual FLL metering. In addition to adaptation work, the Ops Team assisted ZMA with connecting their TBFM support str ing to their TTL lab f or eventual Metering training. Procurement of non - TBFM equipment to support metering was identified during the initial meetings bu t continues to be a challenge. Hopefully recommended equipment will be in place in the near future so th at the many hours that have been spent by NATCA members at ZMA and Miami TRACON working on the TBFM system with their management counterparts will lead to useful TBFM utilization. Additionally, Ops team members travelled to the New York area the week of 1 0/23 as well to verify IDAC equipment prior to the upcoming IDAC training/implementation weeks . Representatives visited the six New York Area t owers that will begin utilizing IDAC as well at ZNY. Ensuring equipment has been installed and is working corre ctly has been a challenge with IDAC installations in the past, so verifying this in advance by the TBFM O ps Team has become imperative. Even though some of the equipment movement and additions that were identified in earlier site surveys was not complete d, the basic equipment for IDAC usage was verified as working correctly and the facilities agreed to move forward with IDAC next month. The TBFM Ops Team will continue to work with the Program Office and Engineering