NATCA Northwest Mountain Regional Update

February 11, 2010

I spent most of last week at ZDV as attorneys for ALPA deposed controllers who were involved in the NORDO incident with NWA188. I want to thank Marc Shapiro from the National office who flew out to represent our NATCA members, and then got stuck in Colorado because of the snowstorm on the East Coast. I also want to thank the Brothers and Sisters from ZDV for their hospitality, including ZDV Facrep Lyle Burrington and VP Doug O’Connell who graciously helped save NATCA dollars by letting me stay at his house while I was in Longmont.

NATCA has spent a good deal of time over the last couple of weeks dealing with the FAA’s rush to implement ERAM in the field. The problems with ERAM continue to be too numerous to list. The agency turned their latest version of ERAM on at ZLC January 30th and the number of Critical Problem Reports remains high. The FAA now plans to turn ERAM back on at ZLC on February 17th using an Emergency Software drop, even though the Critical Problems supposedly fixed in this software drop are outnumbered by the Critical Problems that will not be addressed. Please make sure any and all impacts at ZLC and other affected facilities get reported to your NATCA Rep and if applicable, file an ATSAP report. NATCA will continue to work towards holding the agency accountable for their currently flawed plan for ERAM implementation.

The Annual Communicating for Safety Conference will be held March 22-23 in Orlando, FL. Attendees to this year’s conference will be entitled to up to 16 hours of excused absence if you are normally scheduled 8 hour days, and up to 20 hours if you normally work 10 hour days. The CBA language covering excused absence to attend CFS is contained in ART 20 SEC 6. On the evening of Monday March 22nd NATCA will hold the annual Archie League Awards dinner, honoring the best “Saves” from each Region. The Northwest Mountain Region award winner for this year’s event is Troy Decker (ZLC).

The Northwest Mountain Region has filled our allotted training slots for the NATCA Facrep class being held March 1-5 in Seattle. As a reminder, our Region is allotted 3 slots per training class. At this time, we have 3 slots available for the Facrep training class scheduled for April 19-23 in Chicago, 3 slots available for the class scheduled October 4-8 in New Orleans and 2 slots available for the class scheduled for November 1-5 in Orlando. If anyone is interested, please contact our Regional Admin at Kristi.Martin@natca.net.

There have been several reports of Pay discrepancies from BUE’s within the Region. If you are aware of any of these issues please forward the information to me so we can take the appropriate measures.

Some of the other issues dealt with recently:

--Pay issues at several facilities

--Discipline cases from P80 and PDX

--Possible relocation of BZN Radar services

--ID Cards at MWH

--Dues rebate issue at APA and BOI

--URET training for developmentals at ARTCC’s

--Several Hardship and ERR issues

--Agenda for July Pre-Convention meeting in BOI

--NATCA Reloaded

--Dress code issue at the OKC Academy

--An upcoming AOPA Webinar using Regional NATCA members

--Several ATSAP issues

--Training failure at BIL

--Change in training procedures at TWF

--Drug Testing Issues at S46 and BJC

I will be on vacation from February 24-March 2 and Northwest Mountain ARVP Rick Foster will be acting. I will have the ability to check emails, but will have very limited cell phone coverage at times. Please contact Rick if you need immediate assistance during this time period. His email is rfoster@natca.net and his phone # is: 303-961-5704

Jim Ullmann NATCA Northwest Mountain RVP