Hi everyone,
On 1/14/15 we had a meeting with P80. We discussed three issues that included MMV airspace, P80 LOA, and UAO Tower. I’m going to break down each of these issues and talk about our thoughts and ideas going forward.
Please note that before the meeting started, all decisions tentatively agreed upon between both facilities would not be considered final at this time. Upon completion of the meeting, we gathered all the information and discussed it among our team to come up with a plan that will work best for all parties concerned while always realizing that safety is our number one goal.
We plan on having a second meeting fairly soon which may take place in Portland. I still encourage you to give any feedback or ideas that you may have in regards to any or all of the issues being talked about. I plan on posting this update on the ZSE website as well so that any ideas or concerns that you may have can be posted in the comments section.
#1. MMV Airspace – P80 requested to take over the MMV airspace FL060 and below full time. Their reasoning for FL060 and below was so that they could match up the altitude with their UBG sector. We felt that FL060 was not needed and countered with FL050 and below with the option for us to take back the airspace on an as needed basis. We also discussed as a team that by giving up MMV airspace FL050 and below, we no longer needed the FL060 shelf inside the confines of P80.
They told us with the new radar (ASR-9 and Fusion) that they will take hand-offs much earlier so we shouldn't worry about having to call them last minute. They also plan to staff the UBG sector more frequently with basically what we consider a tracker position as they are anticipating much more traffic going into/out of UAO but I will talk about that later. We also asked them if they needed MMV airspace as it looks today with the current boundaries or could the airspace become smaller. They needed to check on the ODP at MMV and get back to us if any adjustments could be made.
During our post meeting, the question that we discussed from a safety concern was...Should we have the MMV airspace default to the “ON” position each time a new controller signed in?
After much discussion, our team felt MMV airspace should always be “ON” unless the controller turns the airspace “OFF” after signing in. This way, there is no confusion or chance for airspace violations as everyone’s preferred settings would require to have a MMV tear off tab to turn the airspace “ON” or “OFF”.
Note: If you happen to be protecting for MMV airspace when in reality you may already have it, this would guarantee that no airspace violations would occur. If this is the road that we decide to go down, it may still take another 3-4 months before it could be implemented.
#2. P80 LOA – For UAO landing traffic only, P80 requested that all aircraft be routed through the VANTZ gate direct UAO descending to FL060 as we currently do today. They don’t want sector 6 going direct DUBMY like we do now for the RNAV 35 nor do they want any jets over UBG direct UAO at FL060 that we were hoping they would buy off on.
We proposed descending to FL080 through the gate and give them control for turns no further west than direct DUBMY and no lower than FL040 prior to DUBMY. P80 did not want descending to FL080 as they felt we would hang on to the aircraft closer to their boundary. We explained to them that due to our MIA’s, we can’t even descend to FL060 until about 5 -6 miles south of their boundary. What that ends out doing is that if they plan to vector to DUBMY for the straight in, then it makes it really close for the less than 90 degree intercept required for the approach.
If we descend to FL080 and give them the control as mentioned above and shipping the aircraft early, the straight-in to RWY 35 is no problem. They said “NO” to our idea but I believe if we had met them in person and were able to show them on paper how we are trying to help them, they may have changed their mind. We will still talk to them more about this at our next meeting.
There were no other LOA changes that were talked about.
#3. UAO Shelf –As seen before from the previous update last month, I showed you a drawing proposal from P80 that had an extension shelf south of DUBMY that they were looking to take over airspace towards SLE.
Their plan was to be able to use this airspace to vector down winds west of UAO for setting up their sequence. They said that they needed to vector west of UAO for left base because of the PAJA activity southeast of UAO. I got a laugh out of that one. MR. “jump with the jets” seems to have a priority by what they were saying.
We told them that we are not going to just give up airspace before we even see how much traffic will be going into/out of UAO. They said that it shouldn't be a problem for them to vector aircraft for a left base or get close to the proposed boundary as they would be able to vector inside of DUBMY allowing for the tighter turn on.
We explained you can’t guarantee every time that that will happen and if a controller got distracted for a minute and sector 6 had a SLE departure off of RWY 31/34 that it could get very tight especially when two different facilities are working that small of airspace. We also explained that this impedes on our ability to vector aircraft north of SLE. We would rather take a point out on aircraft being vectored or doing a full procedure at DUBMY and miss the traffic with our SLE operations from a safety concern.
So with that, here are the breakdowns:
1. We do not plan to give up any UAO shelf airspace at this time.
2. Not giving up the proposed UAO shelf allows for more airspace to conduct operations in/out of SLE.
3. Eric Tandberg is working on looking at a new SID at SLE where all radials could be used as we do at RDM and EUG. This would allow for more traffic to be worked west of SLE away from having to miss traffic from P80 at UAO.
4. We did discuss what the future may look like where we think this may lead to having P80 take over the Willamette Valley down to EUG and having one controller work that entire airspace from a safety aspect. P80 said that they have most of the equipment ready to go if something like that happens. I do not see that happening anytime soon.
5. P80 said that right now the UAO tower has no FDIO and only one communication line. It looks to me like they have some work to do.
I hope this gives you a fairly good idea of where we are at locally with these issues. Again, please use the comments section to add any of your ideas and concerns.
Thanks for your time reading this long update,
Rick Lund
B-Area Rep