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The training MOU is going to expire on the 15th with no current extension currently planned. The national work group is expected to release their plan for training "soon." Apparently, some managers at my facility have decided this means trainees are coming back on the 16th, and are trying to schedule them. While I understand that training needs to start back up eventually, traffic levels don't really support quality training. That, and COVID numbers are on the uptick nationwide. None of the controllers really wanted us there for the quick recerts, but they understood it was for a couple of days. I see a lot of pushback if they start sending trainees back at this point.
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Jul 4, 2020 16:29
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| # ? Jun 3, 2024 15:34 |
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its all nice on rice posted:The training MOU is going to expire on the 15th with no current extension currently planned. The national work group is expected to release their plan for training "soon." I feel like this will also mean a lot more ATC Zero days/nights as COVID-positive people are discovered to have been in towers/TRACONs/ARTCCs. The more people get locked in a box together, the more risk there is of spread, and thus more “oh gently caress deep clean” days.
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Jul 4, 2020 17:23
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Apparently the biggest driver of us returning to a normal schedule next pay period is the sheer amount of controllers bitching about things like "workload", holiday pay, not having their regular RDO's, etc... I really, really loving hate this place and everyone here.
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Jul 8, 2020 00:28
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fknlo posted:Apparently the biggest driver of us returning to a normal schedule next pay period is the sheer amount of controllers bitching about things like "workload", holiday pay, not having their regular RDO's, etc... I really, really loving hate this place and everyone here. I was chatting with a few controllers about this when was in to recert. One of them said "the paycheck's smaller, but I'll trade it for a five day weekend! What's there to bitch about??"
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Jul 8, 2020 00:36
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fknlo posted:Apparently the biggest driver of us returning to a normal schedule next pay period is the sheer amount of controllers bitching about things like "workload", holiday pay, not having their regular RDO's, etc... I really, really loving hate this place and everyone here. As of today, ZDC, ZNY, ZHU and ZMA are the only centers still on 5/10. For ZMA, that is almost entirely due to the efforts of our FacRep. All the usual run-from-traffic dickheads have been bitching about the “workload” for weeks. Workload that is drastically lower than normal, but high for them, because they can’t loving hide like the slacker cowards they are.
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Jul 8, 2020 01:55
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MrYenko posted:As of today, ZDC, ZNY, ZHU and ZMA are the only centers still on 5/10. For ZMA, that is almost entirely due to the efforts of our FacRep. All the usual run-from-traffic dickheads have been bitching about the “workload” for weeks. Workload that is drastically lower than normal, but high for them, because they can’t loving hide like the slacker cowards they are. I hate working. I'm more than capable of it and won't dodge traffic, I just hate working in general. I'd come in and get my rear end handed to me for 5 days to keep 5 or 10 off without any sort of hesitation. Like it's not even a question. I love to complain about dumb poo poo too. I don't see where the gently caress these people complaining about this are coming from at all. There's a really good chance I'll be openly hostile to the ones that I know have been complaining when I see them on the normal schedule. Thanks a lot you loving idiots. I've repeatedly heard poo poo like "We regularly have to open 4 sectors because it's so busy" from one guy that works mornings on my crew. YOU HAVE SEVEN loving PEOPLE HERE. My crew has been short pretty much every single week due to not having a sup every other week, someone losing a medical, or a couple of assholes that have taken leave. And guess what, I don't care because I have five day weekends to make up for it. I hope the people that ruined this choke on their own lung fluid when we all catch corona once everyone is back in the building.
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Jul 8, 2020 04:35
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Oh hey, we went ATC zero last night and got a building wide deep cleaning for a couple corona positives! Good thing we're gonna OPEN ER UP! We've been looking and the people complaining about how hard they're having to work are doing like 4 hours on position.
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Jul 9, 2020 21:14
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fknlo posted:Oh hey, we went ATC zero last night and got a building wide deep cleaning for a couple corona positives! Good thing we're gonna OPEN ER UP! ZID did too, along with a few others.
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Jul 9, 2020 23:55
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They sent our supervisor home tonight because someone he was with 7 days ago popped positive today!
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Jul 10, 2020 23:41
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Got a call to come in next week so that they can "update" my ipad and set me up for self study home. Not really sure what the point is, as I passed all my D-Sides and am going into the classroom next. Apparently the other trainees are going to have Zoom conferences?? Again, not sure what the purpose is, but the training dept is trying to get something going, I guess.
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Jul 10, 2020 23:51
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The agency is trying to get remote learning set up asap to get classwork done in preparation for accommodating sims and OJT. There's a pilot program in TX to have controllers wear face shields to test whether or not they'd be helpful (?) in allowing OJT to resume. Who the gently caress knows, I don't hear anything until the hair-brained scheme is already planned and then we just try to roll with it
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Jul 10, 2020 23:54
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fknlo posted:
*laughs in ZJX*
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Jul 11, 2020 01:01
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The Ferret King posted:The agency is trying to get remote learning set up asap to get classwork done in preparation for accommodating sims and OJT. There's a pilot program in TX to have controllers wear face shields to test whether or not they'd be helpful (?) in allowing OJT to resume. This all feels like a giant scramble to get bodies back into the building when we should keep non-essentials at home. I want to get back to training, but I'd rather keep everyone safe.
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Jul 11, 2020 06:04
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its all nice on rice posted:This all feels like a giant scramble to get bodies back into the building when we should keep non-essentials at home. I want to get back to training, but I'd rather keep everyone safe. I have to imagine that they’ve granted more excused absence in the past four months than in the past fifty years combined, and somewhere in a forgotten office in OKC there’s a manager who is screaming into a telcon every day about it.
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Jul 11, 2020 15:56
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Tommy 2.0 posted:*laughs in ZJX* They were talking about how lovely it was today and none of them even hit 5 hours. I'd say 5+ hours was pretty standard during the before times with 6+ hour days not being all that uncommon. Gotta get rid of those 5 day weekends so you only have to plug in for 2 hours!
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Jul 11, 2020 21:48
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fknlo posted:They were talking about how lovely it was today and none of them even hit 5 hours. I'd say 5+ hours was pretty standard during the before times with 6+ hour days not being all that uncommon. Gotta get rid of those 5 day weekends so you only have to plug in for 2 hours! Points gun at foot. Pulls trigger.
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Jul 11, 2020 22:09
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fknlo posted:They were talking about how lovely it was today and none of them even hit 5 hours. I'd say 5+ hours was pretty standard during the before times with 6+ hour days not being all that uncommon. Gotta get rid of those 5 day weekends so you only have to plug in for 2 hours! Due to the vagaries of staffing (they just don’t have or need many people on normal ops,) it’s actually our slowest area (frequently two sectors open during the day pre-COVID, on mid ops reliably by seven-thirty daily) who is most likely to cause us to lose 5/10, and they’re still under 4hrs a day. In the bad old days my area bid 28 CPCs, one of whom didn’t have his medical for the majority of the year, and we didn’t have a single monthly average under 5hrs/day. These fuckers can cry me a river. Luckily, our NATCA eboard is super junior, and super into 5/10 or 5/5, and not rolling over for management like some other eboards I’ve heard of who want to get back to being Sat/Sun. MrYenko fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jul 11, 2020 |
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Jul 11, 2020 22:16
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Krime posted:Points gun at foot. It's absolutely ridiculous. People have asked the OM on our nights what the plan is when we're on a normal schedule and multiple people in an area catch corona and they literally don't have one. I'm still pretty shocked that there hasn't been any confirmed in building spread even with the reduced staffing with how it looks like this stuff works. MrYenko posted:These fuckers can cry me a river. I really don't know if I can properly convey how much I hate the people that have been bitching the most about this. Controllers as a group are often the dumbest, most short sighted group of idiots I've ever worked with.
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Jul 11, 2020 22:35
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fknlo posted:It's absolutely ridiculous. "Oh don't worry, it will be." "Yeah, but what if it's not?" "It will be, don't worry" And what do you know, it wasn't, and we ended up working our north arrival sector on the ARSR for a while.
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Jul 12, 2020 19:21
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fknlo posted:They were talking about how lovely it was today and none of them even hit 5 hours. I'd say 5+ hours was pretty standard during the before times with 6+ hour days not being all that uncommon. Gotta get rid of those 5 day weekends so you only have to plug in for 2 hours! The area I was in at ZJX, it was the norm to hit 6+30 on position while we watched all the other areas wear out their new shoes going on break. If we got a third break in the shift it meant we were fat. The other areas would bitch incessantly if they did more than 2+30 on position (this isn't an exaggeration). But yeah, the logic of "less time on position, more time at "work"" was incredible. No one in my area thought that way. fknlo posted:I really don't know if I can properly convey how much I hate the people that have been bitching the most about this. Controllers as a group are often the dumbest, most short sighted group of idiots I've ever worked with. I didn't have this issue when I was in the military as a controller. Nor in the FAA towers. It feels very specific to centers and I honestly have to wonder if it isn't due to the fact that you can fail upwards in a center and become "management" to avoid traffic. It's encouraged to dodge traffic and work in the office when at a center. Along with the sheer amount of entitlement I ran in to at centers and boom, recipe for incredible frustration. Tommy 2.0 fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 13:55
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I have a weird supervisor story from the pilot side- I was doing a practice approach to an uncontrolled field recently. Final approach fix is a VOR nearby a class D field. The approach controller handed us off to that tower as we neared the VOR. We were well above his airspace. Never having experienced that before, we asked the tower controller if it was common for them. He said “it is when the supervisor is working the sector” and then gave us the frequency change to advisory for the rest of the approach.
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Jul 14, 2020 17:09
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Trainees have been getting called in one by one to get a briefing on, what's essentially, work from home. We're no longer on EA, and are expected to self study over an eight hour shift. The training leads said to treat it like we're in the classroom, and try to get at least six hours of study a day. The trainees have been put into groups, depending on whether they're stage three or four. T-TH have Zoom conferences that cover lesson plans. M & F are self study days. Being between stage three and four, I'm not in any group, and have no Zoom conferences assigned. The training team is trying to figure out how to place me, but for now it's general guidance on studying to prepare for stage four. It kinda feels like this happened: MrYenko posted:I have to imagine that they’ve granted more excused absence in the past four months than in the past fifty years combined, and somewhere in a forgotten office in OKC there’s a manager who is screaming into a telcon every day about it. I understand the need for trainees sitting a home to keep up on their LOAs, SOPs, Maps, etc. But since we don't know how long this is going to continue, it kinda feels like Sisyphus pushing that boulder uphill. Two weeks? Two months? End of the year? How long does the agency expect trainees to fastidiously study their materials for hours a day while this goes on? For me, the biggest difference between study from home and in the classroom, is that I can't go down to the floor and plug in. Being able to study something, then immediately go try and apply that knowledge is going to be missed.
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Jul 14, 2020 23:26
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I still get emails from ZKC natca and I got one today about how they're staying 5/5. They're running similar percentage/numbers to us, they're doing it with less people, they haven't had multiple positives in the last week, and they're staying 5/5. Weird. We have a new facrep as of today and I'm really hopeful she's less poo poo than the previous one. I miss having competent union representation. I guess that won't matter for me personally any more starting in January, but still.
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Jul 15, 2020 20:10
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First day back to "normal" is off to a great start. We have less people than if we'd just stayed on the 5/5 schedule. One sick hit, one guy just didn't show up, and no supervisor. They're planning on granting excused absences down to 8 people but all of the high risk people are on this side of the crew so we're just starting at 8 or 9 people all the time anyway and we're just going to have the same amount of people we would have had every day and not get 5 day weekends. Great job team! I'm willing to bet that the "issue" of one crew having more EA days than another is no longer an issue when it's the old guys that come out ahead in the deal as well. e: This has to be the biggest controller self own since the strike. This is the traffic/work level you lazy fucks complained enough about to get us back on a normal schedule? fknlo fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Jul 19, 2020 |
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Jul 19, 2020 15:25
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fknlo posted:I guess that won't matter for me personally any more starting in January, but still. It absolutely will. Do you get a karen of a facrep you deal with, or someone with actual brains and logic you work with?
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Jul 26, 2020 00:38
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What are the requirements for how soon you're allowed to clear an airplane for takeoff behind another departure, assuming it's VMC, and neither airplane is "heavy"? I've had a couple of times in the last few weeks where the tower controller at SEA will clear us for takeoff before the airplane ahead has even rotated, and since I've never seen that anywhere else, I was curious what the rules were regarding departure spacing.
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Jul 28, 2020 00:04
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azflyboy posted:What are the requirements for how soon you're allowed to clear an airplane for takeoff behind another departure, assuming it's VMC, and neither airplane is "heavy"? Not a tower controller. This what the 7110.65 says IRT departure separation: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/atc_html/chap3_section_9.html quote:ANTICIPATING SEPARATION Everything is open to interpretation, but it sounds to me like the controller is assuming separation.
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Jul 28, 2020 05:28
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azflyboy posted:What are the requirements for how soon you're allowed to clear an airplane for takeoff behind another departure, assuming it's VMC, and neither airplane is "heavy"? Separation is determined, in this case, when you begin rolling. So, the timing should be such that you didn't start actually accelerating down the runway prior to the preceding aircraft "taking off," which is generally determined to be when their nosewheel lifts off the ground. The strictest application of this minimum separation standard does result in it being violated fairly often. Though, with obviously little safety risk assuming the preceding aircraft is committed to lifting off. It's not really possible to perfectly apply this rule to the minimum extreme without sometimes going slightly past the cutoff. No, that doesn't make it "right," or whatever. But it happens.
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Jul 28, 2020 15:04
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Thanks for the replies. Common sense says the separation will work (they're not issuing the clearance until the preceding aircraft is far enough down the runway that they're not going to abort, and a Q400 sure as hell won't catch a 737 or A320 in the climb), so I was just curious what the actual rules about that were.
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Jul 28, 2020 20:39
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I always just kinda slow rolled with a sloweeeer lineup when they did that because taking off right into 320 wake was always nasty.
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Jul 28, 2020 22:31
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Tommy 2.0 posted:It absolutely will. We'll soon find out. My personal experiences with her have been positive, so that's a plus. And everyone is wrong on the takeoff thing. It's one in, one out. No exceptions. The tower people are incorrectly applying this. I've actually had a corporate jet say "What, you can't clear more than one aircraft into a towered airport?" when I told him he was number two and to expect to hold. I don't know dude, probably? That hasn't been a thing in either area I've worked in.
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Jul 29, 2020 01:21
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fknlo posted:And everyone is wrong on the takeoff thing. It's one in, one out. No exceptions. The tower people are incorrectly applying this. What does this mean in the given context, of multiple airplanes waiting to take off and being cleared earlier or later seemingly at the controller's whim? Anecdotally I have noticed that I wait longer for a clearance when taking off behind a Citabria than behind a Cirrus, which like...duh? I remember once getting cleared for takeoff while a Pilatus was just starting its roll, but it made some sense since I was at the runup and wouldn't get to the hold bars before he was off the ground, and in the air there was no way I'd catch him. An instructor told me once "when you're cleared on the runway, it's yours, you take all the time you need and don't have to worry about anyone else," so being cleared on while the other plane is still on the ground seems like a violation in that sense...but I can see the controller thinking "there's no way this 152 will catch up to that turboprop" and saving 30 seconds. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Jul 29, 2020 |
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Jul 29, 2020 02:59
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Sagebrush posted:What does this mean in the given context, It means he's a center controller. He doesn't "do" Chapter 3. (Of the 7110.65 ATC Order) (But he should do Chapter 5 when possible)
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Jul 29, 2020 03:38
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Sagebrush posted:so being cleared on while the other plane is still on the ground seems like a violation in that sense...but I can see the controller thinking "there's no way this 152 will catch up to that turboprop" and saving 30 seconds. In the US it's fine. It's based on when you start rolling down the runway in the direction of takeoff.
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Jul 29, 2020 03:42
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The Ferret King posted:It means he's a center controller. He doesn't "do" Chapter 3. (Of the 7110.65 ATC Order) Are those the ones that say I need 5 miles or 1000 feet and I'm supposed to prevent collisions between aircraft? Because that's all I know. I need to beef up on some obscure bullshit so I can write people up when I'm a supervisor  .For real though, I've only worked with maybe one or two people that knew and could apply any departure or landing rules and even they did one in, one out just like everyone else.
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Jul 29, 2020 21:46
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fknlo posted:Are those the ones that say I need 5 miles or 1000 feet and I'm supposed to prevent collisions between aircraft? Because that's all I know. I need to beef up on some obscure bullshit so I can write people up when I'm a supervisor
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Jul 30, 2020 15:01
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2 full weeks on our normal schedule. My side of the crew is down 4 high risk people and then we have an old guy that told them he was going to bang in a lot on his shifts with a lot of crossover and he has held true to his word. Our "guideline" staffing number is 8. We're published at 7 a bunch of days. The days where we aren't there's almost always a sick hit or two to drop us down to 6 or 7. So we're running with the same amount of people we would have been on the 5/5 schedule. We've continued to get busier and busier and the ski country traffic this weekend was drat near on par with a winter ski holiday. The other side of the crew is letting 2 to 5 people off on excused absence every single shift. Apparently the mere existence of anyone getting excused absence means that they won't call in overtime. They for sure won't call it on any day where excused absence has been granted. "Just call in the excused absence people" is the reply. Pretty loving hard to do that when none of those people are on your shift. The scheduling supervisor made a balanced schedule for when we returned to normal and the union told him to stuff it. As far as I know they aren't doing anything at all in regards to getting overtime on my side of the week. At least we're getting 2 day weekends out of it!
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Aug 3, 2020 01:34
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The scammers have figured out that if you're over 30 BMI you're high risk and we're losing/have lost like 4 more people. loving awesome. I just assumed it was never going to happen anyway, but there's absolutely no way we ever go back to 5/5 because of these fat fucks. e: yup, we're hosed on any hope of going back to 5/5. I haven't given a poo poo about the high risk stuff and all the people on EA before, but gently caress this. We're already burning out from running with the same amount of loving people we had while on that schedule while things get busier and we only get 2 days off and things are only going to get worse. fknlo fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Aug 23, 2020 |
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Aug 23, 2020 18:39
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Sorry dude. People are lovely. Just know it's not just your facility.
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Aug 26, 2020 05:50
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@fknlo: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/577677100 finally somewhere worth going. I'm applying for this one since it looks like they're looking for numerous applicants.
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Sep 1, 2020 18:30
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