NATCA Bookshelf

National Office Week in Review: February 7, 2018

A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association

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the President's State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol earlier this week, is impressive. For both events, we impose flight restrictions and engage in an aggressive public outreach campaign to make sure pilots know about them. We work with neighboring airports and collaborative partners like the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and the National Business Aviation Association. When everyone knows the rules, deliberate noncompliance would be much easier to identify. We're also working with other agencies to more closely monitor drones. For months leading up to the president's speech and the football game, we participate in multi-agency meetings to review possible security threats, and strategize to ensure our air security posture protects us from those threats. We supplement our already robust security command center with additional agencies that have expertise in security and defense, in instances like the State of the Union. Still, we rely on our ATO colleagues in and around facilities to be our front line of defense because their local knowledge will help us identify if something doesn't look right. In Minneapolis, where the Super Bowl is being played, as many as 1,500 additional aircraft and 60,000 extra passengers are expected at Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) as well as neighboring airports St. Paul Downtown (STP), Anoka County-Blaine (ANE), and Flying Cloud (FCM). Every air traffic controller in the local towers, TRACON and center got special training to handle increased volume, review new routes and get familiar with broader sectors that are being used to segregate the increased volume of traffic. You can check out more details at www.fly2sb52.org. The traffic mix will be different than a usual weekend. A large majority of the additional flights are business aviation jets from New York and Los Angeles, and we also expect added commercial flights with larger aircraft carrying fans from the communities where the teams are based. Because space to park aircraft books quickly, we expect many "drop and go" flights that drop off their passengers, leave the area, and then return for pickup. We are assessing our equipment and facilities with twice-a-day health checks for fuel, deicing, parking and diversion capabilities. We've also closed the training lab and limited leave so that all hands are on deck in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Our goal is to have visitors out within 15 hours of the game ending, and that requires us to double our overnight shift and have extra staff the next day as well. The event really won't end for our Super Bowl team until it has successfully handed off lessons learned to next year's host, Atlanta, a favor our colleagues are happy to return since they got so much help from previous hosts including Houston, Indianapolis, Phoenix, and San Francisco. That's choreography I think even the Super Bowl planners would be impressed with! Thanks everyone, Teri L. Bristol
 ATO Chief Operating Officer

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