FAA AND BUSH BS PUBLIC OVER MILITARY AIR ROUTES

FAA AND BUSH BS PUBLIC OVER MILITARY AIR ROUTES

By now the last scraps of turkey have been gobbled up, the
travelers are back in their home towns, and the President
and the FAA spokesflack of the moment should be getting
ready to saunter up to the microphones and declare "Mission
Accomplished" with their hokey holiday reroute game.

Forget for a moment that the military turns these routes
over to the FAA every heavy traffic holiday, and always has,
rendering the Decider Guy's announcement a sort of, "Sun
Comes Up In The East!" affair...here's a field perspective
and the idiotic back-story to the FAA's latest shell game,
the over-water express routes for LGA and other East Coast
departures for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Let's call it
"Hide The Airplanes In Military Airspace, No-One Will Think
To Look There!"

About a week ago an East Coast automation manager was called
into the air traffic manager's office for a "briefing." With
about seven day's notice (enroute automation is updated on a
near-monthly schedule) he was told to implement the
President's turkey of an idea...new express routes. Since it
was far too late to make the NAS software recognize new
routes, assign them and process them correctly (hey, it's
not like we KNEW when Thanksgiving was coming or anything),
the best that could be done is draw the routes on the video
map. And draw them they did. But drawing lines on a map, or
dictating that airplanes will get a straight shot after
departure, won't fix the congestion problem in the air any
more than hub-and-spoke will let us solve the problem on the
ground. Here's why.

When a flight plan hits the NAS, it's taken apart by the
software in order to assign the right preferred route. These
new routes aren't adapted into NAS so they won't be assigned
by that center...ZNY for instance. Instead, the standard
routes we've been using for years will be assigned and
either LGA or ZNY departure pit controllers will have to
re-assign them manually, using the override (splat) in the
route of flight. Oops, overriding NAS preferred routing
wrecks havoc with processing. Which enroute sector will the
new departure flash to at? Who will get flight plan
information? Who knows?!?

So now the airplane is in the air, headed out to sea. Are
the pilots over-water qualified? Why would they put
over-water qualified crews, or overwater equipment for that
matter, on the LGA-RDU run? Or any of the others coming out
of the NY airports, destined for domestic airports well
inland? If they're not qualified, they won't accept the new
route. What percentage of flights will be exempt from the
new routes on this count? Hmm, lots of RJs running those
routes. This isn't looking like such a good idea anymore.

And hey, they're really packing onto those routes. They
don't all fly at the same airspeed, so what kind of in-trail
spacing will the Command Center impose to keep this on an
even keel? How much work will the enroute guys have to do to
keep that spacing? Wouldn't they have to do the same work on
the old routes?

And here's the real kicker: At some point these flights
HAVE TO MERGE BACK ON TO THE OLD ROUTES in order to hit an
arrival route transition fix into the approach control
airspace. That's where all the airplanes they DIDN'T move
merge with those they DID, airplanes that would likely
already be separated if they had left well enough alone in
the first place. Increased workload, increased risk, great
photo op.

Now you're on the ground...but it's a HUB-TIME traffic jam.
New routes didn't help that. Just like GPS hasn't solved
that. Just like Reduced Vertical Separation Minima didn't
solve that. Just like ADS-B won't solve that. More planes
may or may not get in the air. Whoopee. That's like saying
more and more people will get through Best Buy on the
morning after Thanksgiving if you keep the same number of
registers open but add four hundred parking spaces. Duh.
All you've done is increase the pressure on an already
overtaxed ground infrastructure.

Here's a funny thing: we've been here before. During the
Clinton administration. On the evening news we saw the
president before the cameras in the Rose Garden telling us
that a new set of routes, which we later referred to as "VS
routes," were being implemented to re-route traffic over the
Atlantic when thunderstorms encroached on the east coast.
Five parallel "airways" running over the water, through
military airspace. They were news to us; we're accustomed to
getting our work requirements from the air traffic folks,
not the president. But hey, we implemented it right down to
sector airspace re-assignments and video map updates. They
rarely used them. Why? All the reasons above. Mostly because
the airlines couldn't guarantee that east coast departure
airplanes and crews would be over-water qualified on the
small chance they might have to fly those VS routes.
Eventually we did all the work again to undo what had been
implemented. Apparently the Bush administration has run out
of ideas and they're using the Clinton playbook. Jeez, I'd
love to hear Brian Williams broadcast THAT!

Hang in there guys, we re-built the system after 1981 and
we'll do it again after the Bush-Blakey-Sturgell Era of
Incompetence And Failure is over. There are solutions that
can incrementally increase safety, efficiency, airport
throughput and decrease flight times and congestion. And
eventually one of these idiots is going to ask the people
who actually have the answers how to fix the problem. Until
then? Remain calm, and remain in the breakroom, calculating
your TSP and your retirement date.