WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON WITH THE WZRRD2 AND ELDEE3 ARRIVAL??

February 25, 2008

Chris Sutherland, NATCA PCT Local President

For those of you in the Mount Vernon Area, I’m sure it’s no surprise that the implementation of the WZRRD2 and ELDEE3 arrivals has been a royal pain in the butt!  In fact, the ELDEE3 is so bad that American Airlines has been calling and complaining that it is not flyable and we’ve heard that many of their FMS equipped aircraft are no longer filing it and have started filing the WZRRD2 arrival!

Which brings us to that issue.  The Agency recently released the WZRRD2 arrival, which in NATCA’s opinion has a built in trap that can end up pointing aircraft at each other.  Please read the article by Randy Buxton on the Local’s webpage pct.natca.org.  The article explains the issue and started the wheels in motion to getting the problem fixed.  Basically, the problem is that if you are busy with arrivals at LURAY and almost all are flying down the ELDEE arrival and one comes down the WZRRD that you weren’t expecting, the aircraft makes a turn towards BUNNN which is most likely where you have your departures pointed at.  Not good!

We continue to maintain that these types of problems, as well as others that have come out of the FAA of late, would have been discovered during the planning stages if we were involved in the development process.  Although the agency has been routinely finding controllers to assign Article 17 duties in the airspace department to implement what they had already decided to do, we believe that the FAA needs to return to including us “front-line” controllers in the design process and not just as an implementation tool.  The problem is just not a local one.  If you have been reading the articles in the press lately, you’ll see that this is going on everywhere.  Members of Congress have been calling on the FAA to include NATCA in the design phase of everything that affects the job that we do.  We will continue to expose problems like these until such time that we are allowed to work with the agency in these matters.

How does all this affect you?  Well besides having to work the sector with the types of problems that I listed above, you are most likely getting caught in the middle of some knee jerk reactions from the agency.  A good example is the helpful note to “use caution” and the mandatory “hand-off” position that the Air Traffic Manager decreed at the LURAY position today to help keep an eye out for these WZRRD aircraft turning into your departures until such time as a change can be implemented.  This certainly doesn’t help your staffing for the shift and you’re going to end up with more time on position for the day, but I ask you to please keep this in mind: Our effort to bring this and other airspace issues to light is working to force the FAA to do the right thing.  This is evident in that the agency is now getting pressure from outside the building and region to fix these problems. 

Please bear with us and understand that the front office will most likely come up with some other short notice “CAP-RAT” type plan until things are fixed.   I will keep you informed on our progress.