Facility Downgrades / Upgrades

Upgrades:
SEA from 9 to 10 effective March 3rd, 2019
LBB from 6 to 7 effective March 3rd, 2019
AFW from 5 to 6 effective March 3rd, 2019
PNE from 4 to 5 effective April 14th, 2019

If the buffer for a 6-7 is 129.9, then the facility must be at 130 or greater for 3 consecutive months along with ATM justification that the traffic won’t die down? Am I understanding this correctly?

SugarFoot1 said:

If the buffer for a 6-7 is 129.9, then the facility must be at 130 or greater for 3 consecutive months along with ATM justification that the traffic won’t die down? Am I understanding this correctly?

I think it has to be a twelve month average where you are above the buffer right? If not many facilities work higher level traffic in June-August if they are dependent on nice weather, but completely dead most of the rest of the year. If that were the case they would all be classified for their peak traffic not the whole year.

FightingIrish2012 said:

I think it has to be a twelve month average where you are above the buffer right? If not many facilities work higher level traffic in June-August if they are dependent on nice weather, but completely dead most of the rest of the year. If that were the case they would all be classified for their peak traffic not the whole year.

It's a 12 month projection that you will remain or be above the breakpoint.

Anyone know where to find the SOP or actually written guidance. I’m not seeing much in the CBA about the process just pay and the complexity formula with a small section about TCI with breakpoint

The CI for each month is actually a rolling twelve month count, and your CI has to be above the breakpoint for 3 consecutive months to trigger a review.

Typically it's a lot more involved than just have you been above for 3 months. You have to do some manual audits, there can't be an errors with your stars adaptations, you have to include a narrative from the ATM for projections. If you trend downwards at all during the process the FAA usually postpones it and does another review when you're upward trending again.

SugarFoot1 said:

Anyone know where to find the SOP or actually written guidance. I’m not seeing much in the CBA about the process just pay and the complexity formula with a small section about TCI with breakpoint

M98 is on the chopping block to a 10. They supposedly pushed out the drop date to coincide with MSP dropping to a ten as well.

Gonna see a lot more movement between the Tower/Tracon and the Center now lol.

RavenYZF-R6 said:

M98 is on the chopping block to a 10. They supposedly pushed out the drop date to coincide with MSP dropping to a ten as well.

Gonna see a lot more movement between the Tower/Tracon and the Center now lol.

They'll hold FPL 11 status for 2 years

I

FightingIrish2012 said:

I think it has to be a twelve month average where you are above the buffer right? If not many facilities work higher level traffic in June-August if they are dependent on nice weather, but completely dead most of the rest of the year. If that were the case they would all be classified for their peak traffic not the whole year.

actually found all the wording. They use 1830 hour averages if there is a huge difference in traffic throughout the year. It’s not a 12 month average.

Maintainvfr said:

The CI for each month is actually a rolling twelve month count, and your CI has to be above the breakpoint for 3 consecutive months to trigger a review.

Typically it's a lot more involved than just have you been above for 3 months. You have to do some manual audits, there can't be an errors with your stars adaptations, you have to include a narrative from the ATM for projections. If you trend downwards at all during the process the FAA usually postpones it and does another review when you're upward trending again.

Manual audits meaning checking to make sure people aren’t swaying data blocks or inputting erroneous traffic count for manual inputs. I wonder how often people do that at places...

Move78 said:

They'll hold FPL 11 status for 2 years

Ok. They’re gonna see a lot more movement between the Tower/Tracon and the Center two years from the date they officially downgrade the facilities.

SugarFoot1 said:

Manual audits meaning checking to make sure people aren’t swaying data blocks or inputting erroneous traffic count for manual inputs. I wonder how often people do that at places...

Yeah there's that as well as making sure departures are tagging up properly, scratch pad entries are correct, etc. Each audit is usually an 8 hour block

SugarFoot1 said:

actually found all the wording. They use 1830 hour averages if there is a huge difference in traffic throughout the year. It’s not a 12 month average.

You didn't read it properly.

"The segment of the work year measured is the busiest 1,830 hours and the
next busiest 1,830 hours in terms of total aircraft handled in a consecutive
365-day period. The use of 1,830 hours is based on the realization that at
most facilities the greatest concentrations of air traffic occur during 10
hours, rather than 12 hours, 16 hours, or the full period a facility is open
over a 24- hour day. Half the days in a year (183) are multiplied by the 10
hours to derive 1,830 hours."

They use the busiest 10 hours x 183 days, AND the next busiest 10 hours x 183 days. Which is 12 months

Maintainvfr said:

Yeah there's that as well as making sure departures are tagging up properly, scratch pad entries are correct, etc. Each audit is usually an 8 hour block

You didn't read it properly.

"The segment of the work year measured is the busiest 1,830 hours and the
next busiest 1,830 hours in terms of total aircraft handled in a consecutive
365-day period. The use of 1,830 hours is based on the realization that at
most facilities the greatest concentrations of air traffic occur during 10
hours, rather than 12 hours, 16 hours, or the full period a facility is open
over a 24- hour day. Half the days in a year (183) are multiplied by the 10
hours to derive 1,830 hours."

They use the busiest 10 hours x 183 days, AND the next busiest 10 hours x 183 days. Which is 12 months

So when they use STARs to count facility traffic how would messing with data blocks change the count? IFR vs VFR? Anything else?

Does stars give counts to a tower based on the destination in the data block or if it’s handed to the tower and then drops off at the airport?

mrobs15 said:

So when they use STARs to count facility traffic how would messing with data blocks change the count? IFR vs VFR? Anything else?

Does stars give counts to a tower based on the destination in the data block or if it’s handed to the tower and then drops off at the airport?

Yeah the adaptation does a lot of the count based on capture areas and scratch pad entries. Terminating an aircraft with a destination in the scratch pad usually provides a higher count, provided the airport is within a certain radius of a class b/c/d. Also practice approaches is very important. VFR aircraft get counted as IFR, and for certain scratchpad entries such as IMA or IMP depending on your facility, they also count as an IFR departure because you're protecting for the published miss.

The tower gets a count if it enters what STARs recognizes as tower airspace.

Is IAD anywhere close to getting their 10?

flying_dutchman said:

Is IAD anywhere close to getting their 10?

Pffffffff

Move78 said:

Pffffffff

I lol’ed too

JNev said:

I lol’ed too

x3

flying_dutchman said:

Is IAD anywhere close to getting their 10?

From what I've been told UAL is bumping up their traffic next spring/summer (delayed this year due to the 737 max issues) and that could at least get them closer. No idea how far away they are at this point though.

Downgrades:
TMB from an 8 to a 7
ERI from a 5 to a 4
Both effective on October 27, 2019.

Maintainvfr said:

Yeah the adaptation does a lot of the count based on capture areas and scratch pad entries. Terminating an aircraft with a destination in the scratch pad usually provides a higher count, provided the airport is within a certain radius of a class b/c/d. Also practice approaches is very important. VFR aircraft get counted as IFR, and for certain scratchpad entries such as IMA or IMP depending on your facility, they also count as an IFR departure because you're protecting for the published miss.

The tower gets a count if it enters what STARs recognizes as tower airspace.

Where can I read the instruction for this? (If anyone knows) just left a facility that was doing this, new facility does and it would be a huge difference