Hello Everyone,
There are two big issues I needed to address so here it goes…
BWS
After a year of being on COVID schedules, we are going to be returning to BWS on March 14th. It was not a decision that was made lightly. There were many different factors considered, i.e. increased traffic projections and increased bid leave. Ultimately, the 14th was determined the best option to make the transition back as smooth as possible.
With the understanding that traffic is going to ramp up slowly over the next few weeks, Candi and I have agreed to temporarily reduced guidelines. The guides will be reduced by two for the day and the swing. This reduction is subject to a review every 30 days until we are back to normal.
With the reduction of guidelines, there will be opportunities for spot-leave requests and/or EA. EA requests will automatically be put into the Web Schedule based on eligibility for that shift and a tracker that Damien and I have created. EA requests can be approved up to a day in advance. The tracker tracks EA opportunities and not actual EA opportunities granted. Management is not tracking EA and there is nothing in the contract specifying the manner in which it is to be divided. Spot-leave will be considered before approving EA.
Downrigger
Saying that the opening of Downrigger went poorly would be an understatement. That being said, I had a meeting with NUW, TMU, and Airspace regarding the operation. We came to an agreement that we needed to simplify things in order to reduce the possibility of confusion. What we ended up with was basically the same as we were prior to Downrigger with one big difference: between the hours of 0800L to 2200L, M-F, instead of clearing aircraft into the airspace, we will hand them off to Downrigger and they will clear them into the active airspace. When they are finished, they will issue a clearance back to NUW and hand the aircraft off to us. There will not be Olympic or Kraken Sectors.
The restart date for Downrigger operations is scheduled for March 25th. You should expect to see more regarding this change in CEDAR prior to that date.
In Solidarity,
Jared Zimmerman
(801) 635-9184