All,

I hope everyone is having a good week.  I am writing you from Glacier National Park trying not to get eaten by a bear.  First and foremost...VOTE VOTE VOTE.  If you haven't voted in the National Election, please do.  If you are unable to, please let me or any Rep know.  

We have two upcoming events.  The first is the Solidarity even on Wednesday August 15th.  Please see the above flyer for details on that.  Also, we have scheduled our next all members meeting for Monday, August 27th at 3 pm at the Rainbow Cafe in downtown Auburn.  The D area draft will be taking place immediately following the meeting so feel free to hang out for that!

The agenda items for the meeting are as follows:

  • Adopt Minutes from previous meeting
  • Bid Procedures
  • MOU briefings
  • Local Finance Policy as it relates to spending money on alcohol (currently out policy prohibits spending money on alcohol, is this a policy we want to continue?)
  • Article 46 Trainee Line Movement
  • Solidarity Event/Holiday Party?

If you have any items you would like added to the agenda, please let me or any officer know.

Alright, on to the business.

 

Direct BTG

It was brought to my attention that in last week’s email I did a poor job of wording what I was trying to say about direct BTG.  I also put a little too much emphasis on the whole thing.  It’s really not that big of a deal.  The only thing I was trying to discourage is creating a situation where you shortcut an aircraft and cause the aircraft to have a longer delay.  If you need to change routes of aircraft to streamline the flow of your sector then you do you.

Also, Bill brought up a good point that when you send aircraft direct BTG you are shortening their route by a maximum of about 5 miles.  That is not that big of an impact.  If it helps you to do that, then do it.  I am not trying to force my technique on anyone.  I spoke to TMU and it doesn’t seem like it matters too much to them either as long as we are hitting our times.

When the workgroup originally met and decided to have all of those routes over LMT and LKV, the goal was to mitigate the impending increase in meter delays and traffic.  It was never intended to be permanent.  The airspace office has already begun doing some work on routes that would help to deconflict a little more from all the southbound traffic.  I wouldn’t expect to see something anytime soon, but it is being worked on.

 

Controlling Sectors

You should have all seen the ZSE Supplement that designates controlling sectors for our special use airspace.  I am working on getting a section added that clarifies exactly what the procedures should be for clearing aircraft into a special use airspace that you are not the controlling sector for.  Basically I want to make sure that the B area coordinates prior to clearing aircraft into our SUAs.  I also want to make it clear that 5 doesn’t need to be handing off aircraft to 10 for us to clear into the SUAs.  I’ll let you know what comes of that.

 

Schedule Negotiations

Jason Alliston and I have talked a few times regarding next year’s schedule and we seem to be largely on the same page regarding what we want.  We can’t agree to anything yet because we don’t have a facility BWS MOU.  We have been working as an EBoard on drafting our U1 (First proposal to mgmt.) and Alex is planning to meet with Don Hill soon.  More on that as I know it.

 

Refuelers

The LSC has a contact at SKA now so if you have any questions or comments regarding the refuelers we regularly work from SKA, don’t hesitate to ask an LSC member. (Jesse Barracoso, James Darlington, Garret Wilkerson, Taunisha Karsh, Clarence Courtney, and Elaine Olson)

 

FREE FOOD!

There is a bunch of food in the NATCA office leftover from the Alki BBQ.  Please come get some whenever you want to.  There are sodas, candy, and a shit ton of little bags of chips.

 

 

Fraternally,

 

Drew