Staffing
We are in full swing with summer traffic. As a result, starting Monday, June 10, there will be two 1530 shifts each week night through pay period 16.
Please keep an eye out on your fellow controllers as we are working more traffic with poor staffing. Everyday we have people call in sick, management has tried to call in OT however only 1 or 2 people are eligible and most of you are feeling burnt out from 6 day work weeks.
Training
It has been brought to my attention that our trainees are not getting consistent training. Half of our trainees fail to get 10 hours of training a week. This has been brought to managements attention. OT has been authorized whenever we fall below guides. Management may also ‘manage’ the area to ensure our trainees are getting a minimum of 2 hours of training a day. If your break gets cut short it is most likely so we can get our trainees certified before they are eligible to retire.
Airspace
This past week many of you have reached out to me about sector 2 during Sierra routes. I have talked to TMU about possible alternate routing and was told it would be difficult to have the B area (which is where the crossovers would happen) buy off additional workload. The first step to help us mitigate this issue is to lower the threshold for the sector going red. I am also reaching out to S46 and SEA to see if they would be able to help us with some in trail spacing on departures. This will take a little time to set up a procedure for reducing the workload on sector 2 but in the mean time, please create a falcon reply and email it to me and Kevin Nolan (kevin.nolan@faa.gov) or give me a date and approximate time in which you had a very busy session that was complicated by Sierra routes.
Brooke
440.227.5591
brooked85@hotmail.com