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The Control Room Floor / Re: Whats up with all these visiting agreements?
« on: May 01, 2019, 06:14:31 PM »These visiting hours are substantial. ZJX calculated all the hours attributed to visiting agreements and it equates to 191 hours YTD. See below:
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That's 191 hours of additional time on ZJX positions, most of which minor, that we would not have received prior to a visiting agreement. This increased our total hours and up-time, increased minor facility traffic, and overall, made a better experience for pilots flying through our airspace.
That table shows an overall downward trend in people utilizing visiting agreements in your airspace. Have you noticed this trend and (if so) what steps are you taking to try and attract towards using the agreements again?
2. Grow our Membership Base
Why do controllers switch ARTCCs? This is a super loaded question, but one reason I often hear is staleness of airspace. Controllers want to try something new and explore new opportunities. Often, when they do this, they don't want to commit to two sets of activity requirements, so they'll decide to transfer out. This transfer contributes to a decline in your home membership base.
Do you have any data that suggests this is usually the case? Most people in the division that I've seen (anecdote) don't seem to have an issue controlling in 1-2 other ARTCCs outside their home facility. An extra couple of hours a month isn't really much.
Visiting agreements help prevent this. It enables controllers to visit and try out new airspaces, without having to leave their home ARTCC. It also prevents a new set of activity requirements. You allow controllers to get the fix for new airspaces, while still remaining loyal to their home ARTCC.
The problem is that these agreements generally only cover minor airports, which don't see the same level of traffic that majors do. At the end of the day, your average VATSIMer is far more attracted to working Orlando than they are Pensacola, as that's (a) where the traffic is and (b) where the complexity is.
3. Establish training standards which align with policy and provides the best experience for controller growth.
Every ARTCC has a different training program and, as argued previously, some are better than others. Visiting agreements allow controllers to learn controller best-practices, from best in-class facilities, and take them back home. It's similar to a professional attending a development conference.
Where this falls apart is that you don't need to even talk to anyone on the training staff or ARTCC staff to actually work their airports. Where's the incentive for someone to learn the best practices when they don't even need to enter into the training program to work the facility you have an agreement with's airports?
Moreover, it teaches controllers how to navigate different airspaces, which helps their growth as a controller. ZJX is flat land, where MVAs aren't a huge factor when controlling. By allowing our controllers to visit at ZAN, they now can become experts in MVAs, and come back to ZJX to share their experiences with other controllers.
How does someone that only controls at ZJX benefit from somebody else's knowledge of MVAs if they're never going to work the ZANs, ZDVs, or ZLAs of the division?