VATUSA Forums
General => Events => Topic started by: Umar Ashraf on August 15, 2021, 10:22:59 AM
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What airport has 4 runways and is the coolest airport ever? You guessed it, we’re bringing the madness back to New York. That’s right...it’s time for some Friday Night Ops at JFK! You know the deal: fly in, fly out, or fly around, and we’ll bring the controllers!
It’s been too long and the City That Never Sleeps is back and ready for action!
Event Fields: KJFK! KALB & KORF
Date & Time: September 10th 2021, 7:00pm → 11:00pm EDT (2300z - 0300z)
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I thought single airport FNOs weren't allowed anymore? So you are just breaking all of the guidelines that we worked so hard to make happen. Awesome.
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We know you’re sick and tired of flying into boring FNOs where all the traffic is nicely distributed!
Imagine using dodgy advertising to create ground stops and try to work around rules implemented and agreed upon by every ARTCC.
Nobody likes groundstops
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(https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/37788817.jpg)
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We know you’re sick and tired of flying into boring FNOs where all the traffic is nicely distributed!
Imagine using dodgy advertising to create ground stops and try to work around rules implemented and agreed upon by every ARTCC.
Nobody likes groundstops
Not every facility wanted those changes.
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Not every facility wanted those changes.
And not every facility shows up to support their neighbors when they should be. One of those is policy (FNO airport requirements) one of them is a courtesy (showing up for your neighbors).
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(https://s.keepmeme.com/files/en_posts/20200902/and-we-are-off-to-the-comments-section-let-s-see-what-the-experts-think-48588ee0d141f739526aabaa96cb53d3.jpg)
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Hey y'all. Couple things to keep in mind before judging this event. First, ZNY is breaking a grand total of...ZERO rules!! This has been approved by all of the necessary people and organizations, including VATUSA. Not to mention, it's not a single-field FNO—ALB and ORF are BOTH part of the event. We are, without a doubt, following the "rules implemented and agreed upon by every ARTCC." We all know this'll be a fun one.
Honestly, there’s one word I can think of to describe this event: awesome.
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Hey y'all. Couple things to keep in mind before judging this event. First, ZNY is breaking a grand total of...ZERO rules!! This has been approved by all of the necessary people and organizations, including VATUSA. Not to mention, it's not a single-field FNO—ALB and ORF are BOTH part of the event. We are, without a doubt, following the "rules implemented and agreed upon by every ARTCC." We all know this'll be a fun one.
Honestly, there’s one word I can think of to describe this event: awesome.
Mind kept, still judging. It won't be fun when we have to give N90 60MIT on the CAMRN....
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Hey y'all. Couple things to keep in mind before judging this event. First, ZNY is breaking a grand total of...ZERO rules!! This has been approved by all of the necessary people and organizations, including VATUSA. Not to mention, it's not a single-field FNO—ALB and ORF are BOTH part of the event. We are, without a doubt, following the "rules implemented and agreed upon by every ARTCC." We all know this'll be a fun one.
Honestly, there’s one word I can think of to describe this event: awesome.
Mind kept, still judging. It won't be fun when we have to give N90 60MIT on the CAMRN....
Technically the LOA is just to hand off to ZNY at the lowest usable FL. If you hand them a stack at HOGGS, isn't the top guy at the lowest usable FL?
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Hey y'all. Couple things to keep in mind before judging this event. First, ZNY is breaking a grand total of...ZERO rules!! This has been approved by all of the necessary people and organizations, including VATUSA. Not to mention, it's not a single-field FNO—ALB and ORF are BOTH part of the event. We are, without a doubt, following the "rules implemented and agreed upon by every ARTCC." We all know this'll be a fun one.
Honestly, there’s one word I can think of to describe this event: awesome.
I’m kind of curious as to why you wouldn’t ask the neighboring artccs to staff airports that can handle a significant amount of traffic. This event just feels like a shady way to get around the rules. Yes. Technically this is not breaking the rules as ORF and ALB are class C airports. But it also says
Any airport chosen to host FNO must be physically able of accommodating FNO level traffic (Multiple long runways, multiple gates, etc.). VATUSA reserves the right to require an airport change if it deems the host airport to be unable to support FNO level traffic.
Granted I am not a controller in zdc or zbw, perhaps Dylan could shed more light into the AAR of ORF, but a quick at the ground chart, it doesn’t look pretty for those airports. Perhaps IAD and BOS would’ve been better choices for the traffic and take some stress off your neighbors.
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Granted I am not a controller in zdc or zbw, perhaps Dylan could shed more light into the AAR of ORF, but a quick at the ground chart, it doesn’t look pretty for those airports. Perhaps IAD and BOS would’ve been better choices for the traffic and take some stress off your neighbors.
This was coordinated with the events teams at ZDC and ZBW, we did not unilaterally decide this. As ATC facilities, we're still subjected to the whims of pilots flying on the network in terms of where the traffic ends up going. Not including BOS in fact helps ZBW because over the past 1.5 years, any time BOS has been in an multi-field event, it ends up taking 60+% of the traffic, even with other big name fields like JFK involved. We're trying to avoid situations where a neighbor ends up doing more work than the host facility.
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hi
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:)
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I’m kind of curious as to why you wouldn’t ask the neighboring artccs to staff airports that can handle a significant amount of traffic. This event just feels like a shady way to get around the rules. Yes. Technically this is not breaking the rules as ORF and ALB are class C airports.
From just looking at the event, it really looks like ZNY asked for two extra airports that would qualify for an event and threw them in there to get it to essentially be a single airport FNO. I think a better decision for this event would have been to include other airports like DTW, SDF, IAD, DCA, something like those that could handle more traffic than ORF and ALB and are more popular like Bobby said. It doesn't help that the only mentions of ORF and ALB being included in the event are in the bottom left of the banner in small transparent text, and in the event description that is formatted like this:
Event Fields: KJFK! KALB & KORF
I have no idea how it actually went down, so I'm not going to say ZNY asked for ORF and ALB in because they wanted all the traffic, but I will say again that is definitely how it looks due to the very obvious attempts to make it hard to tell there are 3 airports included in the event and not just one. I am not trying to say the event won't be fun for people flying and people controlling, I think it just could have been done better and I hope this comes across as constructive criticism and not as an insult to any people involved.
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Noah, please reference Alex's post above. This was coordinated with ZBW and ZDC and in agreement with them, with nothing being decided prior to everyone agreeing.
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Regardless of what was agreed, the event is clearly a tongue-in-cheek nose-thumbing to the new FNO guidelines, which were instituted to *prevent* all FNO traffic from being focused onto a single airfield. But if this was done with buy-in from all interested parties, then the only thing that remains is to watch it go down and see how they do. At the end of the night, *somebody* will get to throw out an "I told you so." Perhaps we can all keep our wagers to ourselves. I unfortunately won't be able to fly in this one but I'll be keenly interested in the post-mortem analysis.
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Regardless of what was agreed, the event is clearly a tongue-in-cheek nose-thumbing to the new FNO guidelines, which were instituted to *prevent* all FNO traffic from being focused onto a single airfield.
Yes, let's funnel an unrealistic amount of traffic into one of the 3 NY Metro airports during convective weather season and just hope for the best.
I'd better make sure someone's on ZMP so we can start creating 50 MIT for JFK over Iowa...
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Regardless of what was agreed, the event is clearly a tongue-in-cheek nose-thumbing to the new FNO guidelines, which were instituted to *prevent* all FNO traffic from being focused onto a single airfield.
Yes, let's funnel an unrealistic amount of traffic into one of the 3 NY Metro airports during convective weather season and just hope for the best.
I'd better make sure someone's on ZMP so we can start creating 50 MIT for JFK over Iowa...
Iowa is scenic this time of year. A couple extra minutes can't hurt.
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I’m just here for all the bitching. Am I too late?
Derek
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Regardless of what was agreed, the event is clearly a tongue-in-cheek nose-thumbing to the new FNO guidelines, which were instituted to *prevent* all FNO traffic from being focused onto a single airfield.
Yes, let's funnel an unrealistic amount of traffic into one of the 3 NY Metro airports during convective weather season and just hope for the best.
I'd better make sure someone's on ZMP so we can start creating 50 MIT for JFK over Iowa...
Iowa is scenic this time of year. A couple extra minutes can't hurt.
Yeah, I could go for Iowa. Iowa couple beers to myself, that is.
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It's going to suck with everyone flying to Albany with me...
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Who needs JFK when you have Albany! See y'all there.
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We may need to divert to JFK Smiffy with this single-airport KALB F-NO!
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Flew into Norfolk last night in the FNO. Departed DCA in a Bonanza. Nice GA flight. VATSIM servers kept tanking....must be those eastern block servers they got when they bought the East German geiger counters, and Gen2 night vision goggles on eBay. LOL.
The good news is, that even with the childish attempt to overload ZNY with traffic to prove a point(....it was obvious....) ZNY handled it all. I don't think any other ARTCC can handle a heavily attended FNO like ZNY can. The other ARTCC's could use this as a gut check moment, and learn a lot from ZNY in my opinion.
Fun time.
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The good news is, that even with the childish attempt to overload ZNY with traffic to prove a point(....it was obvious....) ZNY handled it all. I don't think any other ARTCC can handle a heavily attended FNO like ZNY can. The other ARTCC's could use this as a gut check moment, and learn a lot from ZNY in my opinion.
I highly doubt it was the intention of most pilots to “overload ZNY.” I think the largest stake in the “overload ZNY” game was ZNY themself.
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Flew into Norfolk last night in the FNO. Departed DCA in a Bonanza. Nice GA flight. VATSIM servers kept tanking....must be those eastern block servers they got when they bought the East German geiger counters, and Gen2 night vision goggles on eBay. LOL.
The good news is, that even with the childish attempt to overload ZNY with traffic to prove a point(....it was obvious....) ZNY handled it all. I don't think any other ARTCC can handle a heavily attended FNO like ZNY can. The other ARTCC's could use this as a gut check moment, and learn a lot from ZNY in my opinion.
Fun time.
Seriously? JFK was over it's capacity before the event started.. The "other artcc's" were the ones who actually had to hold pilots on the ground for hours, and vector planes to meet MIT requirements because JFK can't handle the demand. Glad you enjoyed your VFR flight outside ZNY, but it was far from "handled"..
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I was one of the New York Controllers last night. I was on Tower and I was on Approach. I can tell you at one point VATSPY Read 200 Arrivals. I was also streaming the entire event and I can tell you that plenty of pilots provided feedback that they enjoyed it, even including the ground stops and holds. Why? Because it was a non-standard challenge and change of pace. On a normal day on the network, you aren’t getting ground stops and put into holds because of traffic saturation. When the servers died, (for lack of a better verb), that’s when the airspace started getting unmanaged and we had to do some cleanup and holding. Simply because none of our approach controllers and some center controllers could connect. That’s to zero fault of ZNY or any controller. I honestly would love to hear from VATSIM as to the cause of the server issues because if anything this could have provided a stress test data point to VATSIM. I’m not here for a political discussion of the event, or how it was managed, or why it was fair or unfair. I feel like many times after these events we forget the reason we are all part of flight simulation, to have fun and get a taste of realism. Anyone can argue ‘WELL THIS EVENT IS FAR FROM REALISTIC!’ You’re spot on. JFK doesn’t get slammed like this IRL. However if you want to take that stage and podium, I’ll ask you to then explain Cross the Pond. I’ve flown plenty of FNOs prior to COVID, and after COVID. Personally I love the i sanctity, ground holds, en route holding. It’s fun! Many pilots did enjoy it. Some I’m sure had differing opinions and that’s completely fine. After all was said and done, I talked with other controllers, we spent probably close to 1.5 hours talking about what we felt went well, what our downfalls were, what was out of our control. NYARTCC has always and will always be a difficult ARTCC to train in and learn. Hell you need to learn 4 Class Bravo airspaces. It’s a real task. As part of the Instructor staff I pride myself on helping students excel and learn and become better. I also am an AGI/IGI and love teaching ground and real world pilots procedures and policies because well I’m a weirdo. I honestly could not care any less how some people say ‘you take this too seriously blah blah blah’ Give it a rest. Unless VATUSA has a backlog of emails stating how the FNO was a disaster and they hated it and controllers were not prepared and didn’t know what they are doing (which I highly doubt), I’ll view it overall as an event that people enjoyed and was a success. Does the word success mean it was perfect, hell no. Just because you get your PPL doesn’t mean you didn’t make mistakes during the checkride. Same rules apply here. As I mentioned before I don’t like going into the political side of VATSIM, but what I will say is that the events team who set this up on the JFK side did a damn good job. They spent a long time and coordinating with other ARTCCs to make it happen I’m sure. I’m sure there are other ARTCCs that don’t agree with the approval of this event but it’s done and over. Does not mean a valid post Mortem cannot be conducted in regards to how the network as a whole handled the traffic, plus ZNY, ZDC,ZBW,ZIB,ZOB,ZTL handled ground stops, in air holds, etc. Thats a completely normal procedure. However, I’ll go out on a limb and say if anyone here would classify the FNO as an utter ‘disaster’. You’re out of your mind. People had a lot of fun from what I’m seeing across different social media mediums and that’s the whole damn point of VATSIM. To have a sense of realism, have fun, but know it’s okay to make mistakes!
Joseph Pentz
ZNY I1
Private ASEL, AGI/IGI
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Anyone can argue ‘WELL THIS EVENT IS FAR FROM REALISTIC!’ You’re spot on. JFK doesn’t get slammed like this IRL. However if you want to take that stage and podium, I’ll ask you to then explain Cross the Pond.
First of all, Joe, I love you, man. You know that.
Second of all, I didn't fly nor control in the event due to a large family gathering I was hosting this weekend. So I'm basing my concerns about this on the comments I've seen in a handful of Discords, another post on this forum talking about multiple-hour ground holds, and other controllers who reached out to me personally to vent about the night's ordeal.
Third -- interesting that you mention Cross The Pond, because it's actually quite an apropos comparison. It, too, like the FNO, is an event that started out fun and great, and part of the fun was the chaos of it. But as it grew well beyond its capacity, the "chaos" of it became more and more overwhelming, venturing dangerously close to erasing the "fun" and "great" parts. Each had a significant number of participating controllers who said, "it's too much; I'm not dealing with that anymore." And then both CTP and FNO had high-level committees convened to figure out how to "fix" them moving forward. Finally -- AN OPTION ON THE TABLE FOR BOTH WAS ABOLISHING THEM ALTOGETHER.
Look, I get that part of the challenge of controlling is pushing the limits of what you can handle. But when you're holding planes on the ground for more than 30 or even 60 minutes to achieve that limit, you're sacrificing someone else's fun for your own.
My vote is, let's find a BALANCE. If you want to do a single-field event, you're more than welcome to, anytime you want -- EXCEPT on a Friday night. I don't think that's too much to ask.
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My vote is, let's find a BALANCE. If you want to do a single-field event, you're more than welcome to, anytime you want -- EXCEPT on a Friday night. I don't think that's too much to ask.
This. This RIGHT here. Enough with the “my airport can beat up your airport” BS. You want to do a single field event? Saturdays and Sundays are fantastic opportunities for them.