All,
This update is gonna be a doozy so pour yourself a cup of coffee and set aside some time to read it if you can.
2019 Schedule
The 2019 Schedule is completed! The only reason I haven’t sent it out to you guys yet is that there are still a few things that need resolution before we know for sure which version of it we are using. But the hard work is done. BIG thanks to Angie for all her hard work on it. She built a million different schedules and put up with me saying no to 999,999 of them. She logged a lot of her own personal time on weekends and stuff to helping us out with this. We are lucky to have her. Also big shout to Chico to for being a sounding board on schedule stuff as well. I definitely couldn’t do schedule stuff all on my own and thanks to those two I don’t have to. Anyway, schedule will be out soon. Just waiting to hear back on a few details.
2019 MOUs
The 2019 MOUs are also done! They are up on the website. Click here to view them. That link will be updated as we get the bid going as well so feel free to bookmark it to check back, eventually it will have the google doc up there too. If it asks for a password, the password is “ZSE”. We are trying to get bidding started ASAP. Hopefully within a week or so. Prior to the bid, there will be a round of briefings provided on the MOUs so that we all know how to properly bid. As these briefings are going, please ask as many questions as possible. There are significant changes from last year that will be discussed in the briefings so be prepared for that as well. I am always available to answer your questions as well.
Designees for bid taking will be myself, Amy, Angie, and Trevor. Only those 4 people can enter bids into the bid book. So when you decide what you want, just tell them and they will put it in. The less people we have entering bids, the less likely we are to have mistakes made.
Leave Requests Outside of the Bid
A question was asked to me about requesting leave up to a year out in webscheduler and I wanted to clarify that in case I haven’t been clear in the past. You cannot request leave for next year outside of the 2019 bid until it has been completed. So after the bid is complete you may enter your requests. If you put them in before the bid, they will be deleted.
LMT
Responses to the idea of using the radar for down times at LMT were all negative so we won’t be pursuing that. LMT has asked to put it in our LOA that we switch VFR fighters to them by 20 miles out. I see no issue with this and unless anyone can make a good argument against it, it will be in the next iteration of the letter.
Visual Separation at LMT and OTH
Airspace discovered inconsistencies between the 7110 and our LOAs with LMT and OTH regarding visual separation. These are being cleaned up and soon you will see a more clearly defined process for visual separation at these airports. Expect a briefing when the LOA is finished.
S05 Closure
So this has been a real goat rope. The NOTAMs for the Bandon closure were horribly written and incredibly confusing. It should be corrected now but the general gist of it is that Bandon is only open during these times:
Friday from 2359Z-Sunset
Saturday and Sunday sunrise to sunset.
I filed an ATSAP on the poorly worded NOTAMs and if you had issues with it, I would recommend you do the same.
Cascade LOA
Garret and I were on a TelCon last Friday with Cascade about the LOA. They still want us to create some sort of restriction to make sure aircraft get down for both MFR and EUG. After talking to them and getting more perspective from them, I am starting to open up a little to the idea. I just want to make sure what we are doing isn’t too extreme of an inconvenience for the aircraft but also accomplishes what they need. Garret and I will be working on ideas to make this work with minimal impact on us. One of the ideas floated was to just have MFR and EUG tell us when they are in a north flow and then we can do with that information what we want to. I would imagine more of us would be more likely to assign a normal descent as opposed to a PD descent. Feel free to jump in on slack to discuss this or email me directly if you have ideas or concerns.
HAWKZ ROUTING CHANGES
There has been a great deal of talk in the recent months about finding a more efficient routing for aircraft on the HAWKZ arrival. Like I have said many times before, routing over LMT and LKV was never intended to be permanent. Ultimately, we would like to change the arrival to move the fixes BLYTZ and KINGDM over to the west to help deconflict traffic. However, airspace recently learned that due to the backlog created by the national datacomm rollout, it could be 4 years before we can get any significant changes made to the HAWKZ arrival. Garret is proposing these routes instead as a mitigation until that can be accomplished. I agree 100% with this idea. It is understood that by taking aircraft off the LMT/LKV transitions we lose the ability to quickly issue the published holding if necessary. This is unfortunate but it does not outweigh the overall benefits that these routes could provide to everyone (including the airlines). If holding does become necessary, pilots should already have the HAWKZ arrival on hand and controllers could easily re-clear to KNGDM or BLYTZ to hold as published if they desired.
We will be proposing these routings instead of LMT/LKV, for the SEA HAWKZ turbo-jets. These two fixes (KNZIE & KAATH) already exist in the NAS and our high maps. They provide almost the same routing proposed by the B-Area last month to help deconflict with opposite direction traffic in Sector 46 and near the boundary with the D-Area. The green dashed lines around the routes represents 5 nautical miles on either side. The proximity shown to the 13/14 boundary is approximately 4 nautical miles.
CLICK THIS TEXT TO SEE THE PROPOSED ROUTES.
If anyone thinks this is a bad idea, please let me know ASAP. We plan to move forward quickly on our side of this since we never know how long the bureaucratic side of this will take.
One more thing that I would think goes without saying but just in case. Don’t consume any products with hemp or CBD oils. In addition to the existing guidance on the use of hemp foods, the NATCA Drug and Alcohol Committee (DAC) also strongly advises that TDP employees avoid using products containing CBD. Even if CBD or hemp products are sold legally, these products may contain trace amounts of THC due to wide variance in manufacturing processes. The Agency will not consider the use of any of these products as a defense to a positive drug test.
I guess that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be! Have a good week everyone!
In Solidarity,
Drew