YVR delays

The following sentence may surprise you: The Vancouver metering delays passed from Canada’s TMU to us may or may not be wanted/needed by YVR arrival.

All of these delays come from a national TMU facility in Canada. From discussing this with several parties, I believe that one person is responsible for issuing delays to airplanes from many airports. Resultantly, those delays often don’t get issued in a timely manner.

When you’re working Sector 12 (alone or combined) and you’re really busy, it can be infuriating to receive big delays for airplanes that are already inside of your sector.

I have been working with management for awhile to try and get these delays issued sooner. What we came up with is that we told Canada’s TMU that if they issue YVR delays to airplanes who are already inside of Sector 12, we may or may accommodate the delay (workload-permitting).

However, management never communicated this to the workforce. I asked Barry when we met recently if I could just go ahead and share this with you, and he said that would be great.

So here I am.

If we’re sitting on 3/12 with nothing to do and the supe/CIC walks over to us with YVR delays for airplanes we’re currently talking to, I expect us to meet those times. If YVR Arrival calls and asks us to delay airplanes, I expect us to accommodate them to the maximum extent possible. But if we’re busy and we get handed TMU delays on airplanes that are already inside of our sector, I expect us to use our best judgment. If we don’t have time to meet the delay, we don’t have time. Canada has been advised that we may or may not be able to accommodate their delay request if they don’t give it to us promptly.

C area metering

We recently agreed to make permanent the metering trials that we’ve been conducting with the C area — i.e., if there’s a delay, they issue 250 kts, and if there isn’t, they don’t.

We also agreed to conduct a trial period of allowing the C area to issue a PD descent to FL260 if the airplane doesn’t have a delay and doesn’t need to be sequenced with other airplanes who do have delays.

I feel strongly that we shouldn’t be pushing airplanes down unnecessarily. That being said, we agreed to do a trial rather than make this a permanent change so that we can see it on the floor and ensure there are no unintended consequences.

Once this trial period begins, please let me or A area airspace rep Mathew Coughlin know if you observe problems or otherwise have concerns.

Route channelization order

Our route channelization order will be updated later this spring. Chatty and I have several items that we plan to update, but if you have input on anything you’d like to see changed, please advise me or him.

New certification

Congrats to Cody Edwards for getting certified on D1/31!

In solidarity,

Dan Rasmussen

801-860-3821