I received a fair number of complaints regarding my ARTCC's "lack of staffing" of the Aspen Feature Night this weekend. I feel an explanation is due to pilots who tried to fly into KASE with Denver ARTCC ATC.
1.) The Aspen Feature Night was to take place on Saturday at 1800 MDT as advertised on our banner for the event. Here is a link to the actual calendar entry:
http://forum.vatusa.net/index.php?act=cale...mp;event_id=608. Unfortunately for those who did not understand this, the VATUSA Events Calendar runs in Zulu time. 1800 MDT is also 0000Z, which put our event IN ZULU TIME on October 17th. The local time date was still October 16th.
2.) We fully staffed both Denver International Airport (KDEN) and Aspen Pitkin County Airport (KASE) on the advertised local event time of Saturday, October 16th, 2010 at 1800 MDT. All personnel remained online well past the advertised event end time.
3.) We regret the mis-communication and have worked out a solution for all future events with the same start date. Events that start at this time will now be displayed with a start time of 2359Z to allow the Zulu date and MDT date to correspond.
Thanks.