I apologize for not getting an update out sooner. Between our short staffing and trying to get my house ready to sell, majority of free time has been going to building next years schedule and negotiating guides as well as making sure our trainees are being taken care of.
I received word this week that guidance from the region is that we are to keep all trainees on the training side of the schedule everyday and it will be upon those trainees who need currency to get it for themselves. Since this is new information as of this week, I anticipate that on Pay Period 20, the trainees will no longer be scheduled a pro day. I ask once again that you do not ask trainees to staff for you so you can get a day of leave. While I want everyone to get leave, we need to train our way through this staffing shortage so that leave will be plentiful in the future.
Our flow of trainees is not going down anytime soon. If you were not aware, we have 6 trainees in the training department right now with 1 more scheduled to arrive today. There will be a lot of D-side training over the next year. With that said we will have 2 opportunities for Article 5s through the end of the year.
The 1st article 5 will be for stage 3 class for John Conley (CPC-IT from SAN) and Zachary Nelson (DEV from academy) beginning Monday, October 21-Friday, December 6. If you are interested in this detail please let me know.
If you are interested in the above detail but you have scheduled leave you worry may interfere, the next Article 5 detail will begin Monday, December 9 with the end date TBD. There is a chance that our 2 academy grads in this class get placed in other areas to help alleviate our traffic jam of trainees but they will be replaced be 2 more academy grads shortly after.
While I discuss training, I will begin a VERY early solicitation for Recurrent training Cadres. Recurrent training round 14 is scheduled December 1-14. The Cadre class will be the week of October 28. It’s a 2 day class and attendance during both days is mandatory. There will be 2 classes offered over 4 days. If you are interested in being a Cadre, please let me know.
I want to thank everyone for feedback on the schedules I have had in the area. I have made some minor adjustments and printed out new schedules for everyone to look at. I will be submitting schedules this week to management and at that time the schedules on the floor will be removed until we approach the time we get ready to bid.
Onto airspace discussions. I’ve been working with S46 on some minor changes to the LOA to accommodate the addition of PAE commercial traffic. There will be some adjustments for aircraft handoffs and PAE departure routing into sector 2. The routing issue is just to adjust the current operations to make them compliant with the LOA as some aircraft are having issues with the current routing in the LOA. These changes will be minor and briefed in the near future.
I have also received an airspace change proposal on the sector 1/32 boundary. I am going to place a depection of a proposed change to the airspace in the area on the wall near the headset boxes along with some feedback forms. Please take some time to give feedback on the the proposal if you like it, don’t like it, or kind of like it but have an alternate idea.
On a final note, I have hunted everyone down to verify addresses for the upcoming election. The address on the sheet was the address in the NATCA database. If you wrote down a new address, you will need to log into the Natca site to update your address. Please make sure your address is up to date for any future NATCA mailings.
Brooke
440.227.5591
brooked85@hotmail.com