I had a meeting with Anthony and Keeley today to discuss a few things…
First and foremost, staffing. We are still getting James Becker (ZLA) in August and Bryan Barker (ATCSCC) in September. With those 2 coming in, Sean retiring in September and Lee being picked up for an FLM position, so far we are planning on bidding 10 lines. However, we are still trying to select Court Naylor (EUG) and we should know soon if that can happen outside of the NCEPT process. That still leave us 2 vacancies. Anthony has said that its his goal to get us to 13 TMCs and 3 STMCs quickly. I know its been rough with staffing being short. Everyone’s patience has been noticed and appreciated by myself, Anthony and Keeley.
Secondly, there are a couple workgroups being formed to work on PDX metering and trying to start simplifying the military desk. It sounds like the PDX metering one will happen first since we are looking at runway closures starting in July and we would all like to finally see some procedures for PDX metering on paper. The second workgroup will start with procedures for NUW activations and scheduling. My hope is we can clean this up a lot and alleviate confusion and redundancies. I want everyone to have a say in major changes we have and I will continue to represent all of our best interests so please let me know if you have any ideas.
I’m sure everyone has heard by now that we are no longer doing 10 MIT on the HAWKZ in conjunction with metering. There have been a lot of issues that have come up because of it. Anthony has tasked Keeley and I to do 2 TMRs (traffic management reviews) on situations when there was 10 MIT in place and one where there wasn’t to see the impacts/benefits in both situations. Again, please let me know if you have any info or input on this.
I will be starting to work on next year’s bid very shortly. I will plan on building a 10 and 11 line bid just in case we are able to get Court in time. Let me know if you have any ideas on what you might like to see for next year. Obviously with only 10 or 11 lines, we can’t get too fancy but we can definitely look into things.
Lastly (I think), I will be leaving early on Sunday (5/19) and will be gone until 5/22 for NATCA in Washington. This will be my first time attending and I’m pretty excited. I’ve never been interested in the political aspect of things but after the shutdown, I want to continue to do my part to make sure that doesn't happen again. I will be reachable by call, text or email except for when we are in meetings. But I will for sure get back to you as soon as I can. If you need something right away, don’t hesitate to reach out to Derek or Amy.