Craig Moulton Posted February 11, 2007 at 08:14 PM Posted February 11, 2007 at 08:14 PM The boys at Minneapolis ARTCC are ready and waiting for you to come visit them this coming Friday. They will be staffing Two of their Cl[Mod - Happy Thoughts] C airports this week, and have outdone themselves again in publishing excellent information which can be found on the FNO Briefing page. Our weekly FNO event is continuing to draw lots of attention, and we are very pleased with the weekly numbers. We'd like for you to come on out and support FNO again this week. ZMP is staffing Lincoln Airport and Eppley Airfield in Nebraska (be honest, how many of you can honestly say you've EVER landed in Nebraska?). If you visit the FNO website, you can find out all the information about these airports that you could ever have imagined by clicking on the airport name in the right hand frame of the page (it links to the airnav.com website). We have also provided you with links to all the charts you'll need for either airport, pre-planned flight routes, and scenery (though we were not able to find any scenery packages for either airport this week) on the FNO website. Plan your arrival into either airport, or your departure from either airport between 0100-0300Z. ATC in the area will be very well staffed, and we promise you a great evening of fun, flying, and ATC. We might even be able to promise you some bad weather this time of year! (Hey, it's winter in the midwest!) As this is a weekly event, you will be happy to know that in the coming weeks we will be visiting ZDV (DEN and EGE), ZHU (IAH), and ZTL (ATL). Fly Safe! Have Fun! Craig Moulton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristofer Pierson Posted February 17, 2007 at 07:45 PM Posted February 17, 2007 at 07:45 PM Dear VATUSA Pilots - On behalf of the whole crew at ZMP, thanks for participating in our FNO at KOMA and KLNK. I realize many of you had a choice given the last minute event at ZTL, and we appreciate those of you who chose to trek north, and fly in some real midwestern winter weather (I think the wx went to 1 and 1/4 miles at some point ). I also very much appreciate the patience and professionalism exhibited by the pilots who came in. Many of you got vectored all around the place before actually getting down, mainly due to the constraints of the OMA facility and some problems our controllers were having with voice comms. In addition, we realize that some better "flow planning" could have made this event an even better success. We have certainly learned some important lessons regarding hosting such a heavy event at a smaller facility. The reason I am writing this post, is that it has come to my attention that some folks thought this was a lousy event...a disaster...poorly controlled...didn't pull in enough traffic....the list goes on and on, as I have heard it all. I would have to emphatically disagree with any of these sentiments. It is my obersvation as an airline pilot in the real world that nothing can be taken for granted in todays USA airspace environment. Had this been operated anything more akin to real world standards, we would have spun several airplanes...we made it through the event without one hold clearance issued. We opted instead to utilize delay and sequence vectors in the furtherance of "forward progress" of the landing flow into KOMA. My point is that it should be desired, but not expected, that you complete a flight wheels up to wheels down without some sort of surprise, challange, or delay. I fly the same "boring" routes in and out of my airline's hubs every day...sometimes the same places twice in a day of work. Each leg, however, provides some new challange, and it is never, in my opinion, boring. But this isn't r/w...it's VATSIM. And that being said, it never ceases to amaze me how "real" it gets sometimes. ZMP has a very dedicated roster of controllers who wish to put quality and professionalism first before quantity. Our folks work very very hard to fulfill challanging roles. We are not here to "push tin", but to rather emulate as closely as possible the r/w ZMP ARTCC, which has been recognized repeatedly for their committment to safety and quality. Again, thanks to those of you who flew into Lincoln and Omaha last night. We appreciate your continued support of ZMP, and look forward to serving you in the very near future. Sincerly, Kris "KP" Pierson vZMP Air Traffic Manager "No sir, I did not clear you for a PRM." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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