How the sausage gets made

Apparently some guy fell asleep on the mid shift at an airport on the east coast recently. So now we have a rule saying that, on the mid shift, we are required to make sure the controllers around us are awake before we give planes to them. I don’t know about you, but I tend [...]

ATSAP

After you pass through the second set of security doors at Minneapolis Center and walk onto the control room floor, there is a directory board. It’s just past the OMIC desk where a left turn takes you to the areas and a right turn takes you to Airways/Facilities, TMU, and the supervisory offices. The board [...]

TMU 2K+9

This is a really nice overview of my job. It includes videos, even. Every two weeks my whole facility gets a briefing on an item of facility interest. We only get them every two weeks because it takes that long to cycle 400 or so employees through the briefings. After all, we can’t all go [...]

Work: Relief briefing

You’re taking sector twenty-four. Equipment works, URET, ERIDS, and EDARC work. Approaches are open and working. Altimeters high, weather IFR to marginal at Alex. Light chop at Fargo flight level three-two-zero to thirty-four. Solicit for rides. No ice. Flow control JFK, Newark, Denver Jets and Props, ORD MIT forty over Dells, no Minneapolis. Special none, [...]