Please help me to congratulate Mark Hubbert on his new appointment as the ZME ATM!  Mark has been a dedicated member of ZME, most recently serving as the DATM, and I'm certain he will help ZME prosper in the future.  Welcome to your new role, Mark - we wish you all the best!

What exactly does he do anyway?  

Lol...  Happy birthday Gary!

Bring it up to your ATD in private - this is not the way to achieve progress.

Since I misinterpreted the rules and gave ZJX a premature authorization to operate as a major, I'll take the blame for their troubles, but I had to ask them to shut down major ops until this was taken care of - certainly not what I had planned to do.  And it certainly wasn't through any fault of ZJX.  Just a bureaucratic hiccup.  Looks like things will be back up soon though, so that's good news.

Ok, excellent - thanks for the info.  I have one question since I'm talking with all my ATMs about this at the moment...

If an ARTCC has a Major facility, how is it that their CTR position is not expressly defined in the GRP as a Designated Airspace?  I hope you see my question, and I'm sure it's been answered years ago, but since we're talking about it now, I'd just like to make sure we're doing everything right...  Can a visiting C1 come in and control ZXX_CTR if they don't have a certification to control at the Major facility KXYZ included in the airspace?  I'm supposing that they cannot, in fact, do this - it simply wouldn't make sense.  But the GRP specifically says that a CTR airspace is not a Major airport or a Designated Airspace by default, so...  Do I tell my ATMs to treat their CTR airspace as something that requires certification (if it includes a Major facility), or that if it's not specifically listed in the GRP document, that their CTR facility is controllable by any C1 without any certifications?

For all those concerned, yes the ZJX ATM asked me how could they get KMCO to be a Designated Airspace.  I pointed them to the VATUSA website where they could request that an airspace be considered by the ruling authorities as such.  Since I am not part of the process that decides this (the EC does), I subsequently informed them that when and if they see their facility listed on the VATUSA page under "Approved Major Airports" (see link here http://www.vatusa.net/major_apt_list.php, then they could go ahead and treat it as a major airport.  I don't claim to have any knowledge of how this was decided, or how it was listed up on the VATUSA page, but being that it was, they had at least my permission to use KMCO as a major airport, I will vouch for that.

I now understand that the link Norman sent is the official authority on what is and what is not desingated airspace.  I will not refer ATMs to the VATUSA list anymore, but I think obviously that should either be kept up to date or taken down altogether, so as not to cause confusion.  

Daniel, thanks for forwarding this post to the rest of the folks at ZJX, but they are under the impression that KMCO is major because of what I just said above.  They should continue to follow their current procedures until Gary gets the status "worked out" as he mentioned above.  I'm not going to ask them to change their policies and procedures on a temporary basis, as I've a feeling that Gary will come back to us with a ruling shortly, and then I'll ask them to take actions if necessary.  I understand that during this short, interim period, KMCO will be operating as a major airfield (as they have been since May), even though it is not officially listed in the link that Norman listed above.  We'll get a ruling shortly, and then we'll do what needs to be done.

I saw that when I came home, and if I would have had privileges to light up one of the others, I would have.  It's always a good thing to see. Especially when all the Southern Region is present and accounted for   Good job, guys!