ARTCC Consolidation

[Pan Lalas]

Let me ask you this. How often do you see Gander/Shanwick Oceanic covered? How often do you see ZAK/ZWY Oceanic on. I'm talking about real world sectors that even in VATSIM they have traffic 24/7. Ask yourselves why nobody bothers to staff them regularly?

 

Let's also have a look at other "consolidated FIRs" examples that are not realistic. What about this SE Asia project a few months ago? They staffed it for a couple of days. Where is this thing now?

 

Let me tell you what will happen. A bunch of guys will say "Oh cool. I'm going to take another rating. Another badge". They'll sign up for training (obviously taking training resources from ARTCCs that already have a hard time teaching their own students). They'll play with the new toy for a couple of times. Then they'll log off and open MIA_APP or DEN_CTR because that's what they know, that's fun and that's what they want to do.

 

The whole concept sounds to my ears like "We got bored. Let's find something else to play with". I'm pretty sure that the majority of the C1+ rated guys in VATUSA know exactly what I mean. The only problem I see is the amount of guys that we'll lose in the process (who are already one step away from the door anyways), because we want to give a try to something that, as history has showed with similar projects, will fail and become obsolete in a month or two. Does this network care about those members? Who knows.

 

As for this repeating question about "why do we need this realism", after all those years I tend to believe that it comes from people who have either never given it a try or tried it and failed. The minimum effort doctrine. I take pleasure from trying and learning. Why do you want to ruin my fun factor?

[Pan Lalas]

What this does, is make a mockery of all those controllers who put in so many hours of their lives to learn the intricacies of their air spaces. It invalidates the process. Especially if you let them provide Top Down... So Joe Shmo from Z Who Cares can work arrivals into DTW, MCI, ORD, MSP, IND, CVG, etc with Zero Training?

 

 

It wouldn't be top down if my understanding of it is correct read my post of the explanation of Eurocontrol, which is only down to FL245 and then onto enroute and lower controllers, the practice is if there is no lower control below fl245 then pilots go to unicom.

 

Your creating demons and monsters where there are none.

 

Wycliffe

 

Please understand that we're talking about different things here. The structure of the ATS in Europe has big differences to the US one and if we ever need to come to this I can easily name half a dozen examples.This reminds me the long discussions about GRP. How did the GRP work for a tower guy in Sydney that wanted to transfer to NY? Was it that simple for him to do the transition?

My experience being a TA for a couple of years showed the opposite.

 

And now that I think about it. Why don't we unify the phraseology all over the world. Great service for pilots. The only need to recognize one set of instructions. "EZY1, Heathrow approach, radar contact, turn left hdg 050, climb and maintain 16000 (let's unify the transition altitude also,why use the real ones?)", or "5 miles from the OM, fly heading 070, maintain 3000 until established on the localizer, cleared ILS27L approach". It would definitely make VATSIM a friendlier environment for the pilots.

[Andrew Doubleday]

The "Grade-A meat" as I referred to earlier... VATUSA - you're annoying them time and time again. They're going to leave you high and dry giving you no choice but to replace them with inexperienced members who will in turn, likely continue the degradation of quality.

 

I get the feeling that this is what the plan is, however. For the experienced and quality members to get pushed out at the end of the day so the focus can be placed on entertaining the "simple users" since they seem to be far more important. I don't think anyone does actually care, Pan. Even if that "too realistic" group leaves, it was in the master plan to drive them out anyhow... They're a road block on the road of "simplify, simplify, simplify", after all.

 

Noting by how overlooked my "problem" post has gone so far, I get the feeling nobody wants to address it. Sure it's a sticky topic, but it's a real problem. Opening m[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ive super center sectors does nothing but encourage this quality issue to get worse. Whether or not management wants to acknowledge/address it... well that's a different story. Again, I get the feeling it's going overlooked for a reason... Please correct me if I'm wrong. I've seen things like this happen many times in the past (GRP, Dennis Whitley as USA1, etc...), so a pessimistic attitude towards what actually is going on behind the scenes is just force of habit dropped on me. Please accept my apology if, "I've got it all wrong" this time.

 

So I'll ask again, where have any of these people's opinions been taken into consideration? Was there ever a plan to solicit feedback for any of this? Or was it just going to become policy one morning without notice? Have we not thought about the quality issue VATUSA faces before deciding to implement this? Or does that simply not exist as a valid problem here?

 

I've talked with numerous people about this and most seem to think it's pretty bad. Again there are tons of reasons behind it. Bigger problems need to be addressed before something of this nature should even have been considered. I'm afraid this is a very slippery and sharp-downhill slide VATUSA is about to take...

[Daniel Hawton]

I'm all for realism too. But is there ever a time when coverage might be more important than realism? Take a quick look at the network now...midnight PST. There are 3 ARTCCs currently staffed in VATUSA, and around 28 pilots online in the US. Three of those pilots are currently receiving ATC services.

 

Look at Europe at midnight UTC. How many of the FIRs are lit up EAST of the GMT line on a Wednesday night? None. It's hard to find a Europe VACC after midnight UTC (local all the way to +3), so that point is not even a reasonable one.

 

If pilots really wanted ATC, then it's common knowledge to fly during the more peak hours locally. Creating "mega Centers" is most definitely not the answer. The pilots that generally fly in VATUSA don't know that when they sit on the ground at SNA, for example, to call up LAX_APP for top down coverage or to even check to see is LAX_APP has combined with SNA SAN etc into a larger So Cal Departure/Approach.

 

How on earth can you justify this? There has been only 1 person in this entire thread that supported it beside you.

[Daniel Hawton]

Emphasis mine. It works in VATEU because it mirrors real world procedures (EuroControl).

 

Do NOT apply ICAO or other standards just because it works somewhere else. We do things in VATUSA the way the FAA does them. THAT is what we simulate.

 

It works in VATEUD because there are often gaps in staffing, not because it's done in real world. In real world, Eurocontrol does not cover all of Europe.

 

There are no "supersectors" in the Middle East, South East Asia or Australia, yet they have been implemented in VATSIM because there aren't enough controllers.

 

For you to say "do NOT apply ICAO or other standards" and say that you want to do things the "FAA"-way is contradictory. Last time I checked, the ICAO is a UN organisation of which the US/FAA is a key player. If you don't want to go ICAO, you have to let go of the alphabet airspace cl[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ification, separation standards, phraseology and more that you use today. Believe it or not, the US is very compliant with ICAO standards. Did you know that the UK has 5 wake turbulence categories, whereas the US uses the ICAO ones with minor variations? Did you know that the US uses more cl[Mod - Happy Thoughts]es of airspace than most countries? Some countries specify approach clearances with approach type rather than chart title as recommended by PANS-ATM.

 

Blasting the ICAO as something foreign and invasive only makes you seem bigoted, immature and with a complete lack of sense of the global scale of aviation.

 

You are misinformed. A large majority of our airspaces are completely different than the ICAO airspace cl[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ification system. The UK has more types of airspaces than we do. Our phraseology isn't shared. Very little of the US is actually ICAO specific. Just because a couple things are similar, well, you can only have so many varieties of apples but in the end, they are all pretty similar indeed. But if you look at the actual inner workings of the FAA versus ICAO (namely Europe), you'll see that the US side of aviation is completely different. Europe, for instance, is years ahead in ATS routing. The US is catching up, but we are years behind.

[Patrik Yngver]

So Joe Shmo from Z Who Cares can work arrivals into DTW, MCI, ORD, MSP, IND, CVG, etc with Zero Training?

 

Actually, I know for a fact that Mr. Shmo is very competent

 

Jokes aside, I got this matter in my knee as a member of VATTHD regarding the aforementioned super center, South-East Asia Control. I was very split in this matter, that's no secret, there are many issues (such as controller knowledge of many different vACCs, after all in SE Asia there are different countries too, not just parts of the same as in the US) but on the other hand, the upside is that we can provide control (top-down to major airports in every vACC) in a region of VATSIM that is very quite most of the time, which I like a lot. So basically we are forced to sacrifice easy-to-earn and realism in order to get more covrage, for now, I think it's good, I've worked the position and with a good grasp of how to read charts, you'll do OK, but we will make training material available too. I'm not saying this is the sollution for the US, after all, there's a lot more traffic there and thus under peak-periods, that super center could very well be a "downgrade" in terms of quality from the non-manned center. I also don't see that any super center needs to exist of ever, should say, Africa bloom in the future and get good coverage, I wouldn't protest in s[Mod - lovely stuff]ping it. This could be a good incentive for low-traffic regions and in our case pilots really appriciate it, finally being able to have ATC from Singapore to Bangkok one day/evening/night whereas they at best had Singapore Control and Bangkok Control on before, save for World Flight.

 

'nuff said, that are my 2 cents and I'm no expert on the situation in the US, even though I enjoy flying in the US, it's often a bit outside of peak times (living in Europe) and I'm not too well versed in the complexity of the airspaces, other than what differences I can pick up from the charts.

 

Blue skies!

[Richard Gerrish]

There has been only 1 person in this entire thread that supported it beside you.

 

I certainly hope you're not talking about me...if not glance over the rest of the post and write it off as sleep depervation and good old fashions US medical practice

 

Support the idea not in the slightest. I learned a long long time ago in my profession that being able to step back and look at both side of the fence will at least allow one more facts to go by then simply what he/she know of the world(real and virtual)

 

I can see points that if done correctly it could improve things but at the risk if done quickly and haphazardly it will crash in flames.

 

ex ZXX is hosting an event and their neighbors can't provide an enroute controller, This could allow for a properly trained controller to work a super center and at the very least start straightening out the mess that tends to happen when pilots rush into an event from unicomm into some likeness of a conga line

[Rahul Parkar]

Why do that when instead, you could have a team that can be called upon in those times of need? Or a set of certified controllers who can help staff during events

 

...

 

Cheers!

Rahul

[Ryan Geckler]

Why do that when instead, you could have a team that can be called upon in those times of need? Or a set of certified controllers who can help staff during events

 

...

 

Cheers!

Rahul

 

ACE team.

[Rahul Parkar]

Point intended.

 

Cheers!

Rahul

[Manuel Manigault]

Rather than the Super Center idea, I would much rather have the option of providing a minor High CTR cert within the boundaries of my ARTCC only. The minor High CTR would be similar to EuroCenter and would not provide top down service. Low CTR would continue to be cl[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ified as major and they would be responsible for providing top down service. This would give quality controllers who may not wish to learn major airspace the option of providing some enroute services, and I do believe that it would help with enroute coverage without sacrificing quality at the lower levels. In my opinion, major TRACON is more difficult than high enroute.

[Rahul Parkar]

Well,

 

I like that idea a lot better, (If that counts for anything)

 

Cheers!

Rahul

[Andrew Wolcott 814793]

If the goal is to allow a single person to cover more enroute airspace, then consolidating ARTCCs isn't the answer. Allowing a controller to connect as more than one CTR might be ...

 

If ever there was a proposal that I thought I could get behind this would be it. Barring network limitations I think a discussion on this would be interesting.

 

But again, training standards across the ARTCCs may become an issue, and I could only see this work if a controller were fully certed on each ARTCC (including majors) he/she was logged in as.

[Michael Hodge Jr 961044]

So the problem is that there isn't enough people to provide adequate en-route services across VATUSA. Am I understanding that correctly?

 

If so, then wouldn't it seem logical to try to determine exactly why that is? Is it because lack of instructors? Lack of new students? Morale? Inefficiencies in the training process? When you really step back and look at it, what is the core issue(s) that we are dealing with here?

 

Once that determination is made, shouldn't we try to fix the problem at hand, as opposed to simply creating what appears to be a band-aid solution to a much bigger problem? Is creating additional training processes to an already stressed system really the answer to go, and at what point are we increasing the quality of the service we provide by doing this?

[Logan Gloss-Ivory 812647]

When you really step back and look at it, what is the core issue(s) that we are dealing with here?[...]Is creating additional training processes to an already stressed system really the answer to go, and at what point are we increasing the quality of the service we provide by doing this?

I could not have put this any better!

 

There is a lot more to the background issues going on here Michael has touched on. All this plan is going to do is ignore the problems instead of addressing them, by sweeping the problems under the rug like VATUSA and the Founders have done in the past with their 'quick' decisions. Why are they afraid to listen to the people in the trenches, the ones who are actually promoting the network on the front lines?

 

Quality will diminish like it has repeatedly in the past...look at how many great volunteers we have lost because of this.

[Ryan Geckler]

...look at how many great volunteers we have lost because of this.

 

And think of how many more you could lose.

[Kyle Rodgers 910155]

Advantages:

-More coverage for pilots

-More traffic for controllers

-More control for centers where the adjacent center has the initial descent

 

Disadvantages:

-More training for controllers, in an already slim C1 pool

-More SOPs to remember

-Traffic could easily become too much to handle

-Top down services would suffer, in the above case

-Logistics of training would be a mess

-Logistics for the progression of controllers would be a mess

-Requirements of controllers is yet defined

(If I'm part of N90, can I control ZDC airports only, or am I required to control others now?)

 

 

 

To be honest, there are nights in ZDC alone, where I'll be on center and beg the first person who jumps in Teamspeak to jump on even a single Cl[Mod - Happy Thoughts] B Tower to lighten my load. Imagine someone who logs in on NY_CTR, alone, and has to deal with a ton of traffic in N90 (the current, real N90, not this super...thing...), and now has to deal with PCT, among other TRACONs.

 

In its defense, there are some nights that I wish I had control out into neighboring ARTCCs in order to properly sequence/space traffic into my own ARTCC, but that isn't enough for me to want to combine anything. If anything, the one I'd want to [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ume while on DC_CTR is CLE_CTR, and in the new combination, I can't (if CLE_CTR is offline, and the pilot doesn't enter the proper expected crossing restrictions manually for the ROYIL/WZRRD into the idiot box, they're insanely high when they hit ZDC).

 

 

 

 

Everyone always told me to pay attention to history, because it's better to learn from others' mistakes instead of learning them yourself:

 

[Mod: Removed. We don't need that kind of comparison here thanks. NB 870575]

 

Furthermore, I hate Center already. Most of the time I'm on, it's because it has the most visibility and I do it because it's better for my ARTCC. Now I'm going to be forced to deal with all of the problems of the other ARTCCs? Just for clarification, I mean that in terms of, here at ZDC, our problem areas between us and the pilots are the departure out of DCA; the arrivals into BWI from the northeast, IAD/DCA from the west, and RDU from the south. Now I'll be forced to pick up the problem areas of the EWR8 and the KND1 departures, among the rest? No thanks.

 

 

 

Again, I also object to the idea my ARTCC is going to be named after a TRACON.

[Darrol Larrok 1140797]

 

[Mod: Removed. We don't need that kind of comparison here thanks. NB 870575]

 

That's really not an appropriate analogy.

[Kyle Rodgers 910155]

Okay, let's use a more "PC" example, shall we?

 

We need to learn from the mistakes of the past. The Roman Empire fell because it was spread too thin. Let's not spread our resources too thin here.

[John Muenster 1149119]

Ahh the typical and democratic editing and moving of threads... oh wait democratic isn't the right word.

 

Anyway to the real issue, has anybody thought about how useless high en-route centers are on a normal day on VATSIM? How often do mid-airs occur in the flight levels of uncontrolled airspace? I'd bet not very often with our traffic levels.

 

Another aspect to look at is will a super center really attract more pilots? My guess is no, how many people flying coast to coast want to hear "Midwest Center, radar contact over PSB." Than they have to sit at their computer for hours, or they'll request to step away for ridiculous periods of time, either way seems pointless to me. And finally 4 hours later as they p[Mod - Happy Thoughts] the DIK VOR, leaving my airspace to the west, West Coast Center offline...."

 

To me it seems rather unnecessary to have one person controlling multiple ARTCC's even if they only own above FL240 or whatever. If you include the possibility of top-down inside those borders I think that is completely insane, and anyone who says that controller quality for traffic into those airports won't suffer is off their rocker.

 

All that said I see one thing that could possibly work, and since lack of controllers is apparently an issue in VATUSA, why not allow a controller to log on and cover all the TRACONs within his ARTCC's airspace. While this may not result in great controller quality either I think its a better option as the terminal portion of the flight, on VATSIM specifically, is far more significant than the enroute. For example signing on ZMP_APP or something like that would allow one controller to work MSP, OMA, LNK, DSM, GFK, FAR, DLH, etc. To me that seems like more bang for your buck.

 

EDIT: That suggestion is simply more palatable to me than super centers, I don't really want to see that happen either because I like the network as it stands now. But it appears consolidation is going to happen no matter what most of us think, so I think super TRACON is the better option.

[Ernesto Alvarez 818262]

there are already combined approach positions in VATUSA that do exactly that

[Kyle Rodgers 910155]

...andlikesuchas? NORCAL/SOCAL/Potomac and that lot don't count. The only reason they do that is they're covered by one facility in the real world.

 

He's talking about a situation where I'd log on as DCA_APP to control the full PCT, in addition to ROA_APP and the others that may be 200nm away.

[Ernesto Alvarez 818262]

visit ZJX its a new one with them. Daniel can probably clarify how that one works with JAX and MCO (not sure what else is handled with that one). last time i flew in i was told by JAX Approach he was also handling Orlando due to this. specifics wise, Dan can clarify there how they do it

[Kyle Rodgers 910155]

That's pretty cool. Reminds me of the way it's done on another network, which seems to work pretty well.

[Ryan Geckler]

All that said I see one thing that could possibly work, and since lack of controllers is apparently an issue in VATUSA, why not allow a controller to log on and cover all the TRACONs within his ARTCC's airspace. While this may not result in great controller quality either I think its a better option as the terminal portion of the flight, on VATSIM specifically, is far more significant than the enroute. For example signing on ZMP_APP or something like that would allow one controller to work MSP, OMA, LNK, DSM, GFK, FAR, DLH, etc. To me that seems like more bang for your buck.

 

This. I think by allowing multiple connections/frequencies and/or rewriting the voice code is the best way to go if you want to consolidate everything. Heck, you could even use the proper frequencies and switch like real life.