Congratulations Pan!

Matt,

Before you go opening your mouth about ZAU, how about we do a little fact checking.

1. Before you go around slinging accusations that the facility is in shambles. I recommend you take a look at how the facility currently runs. You're talking as if the last ATM is still running the show. He's not, we've righted ship, and are making progress. You can't expect changes to happen overnight. In the 10 months or so that I've been the dATM, we've instituted new policies and LOA's that get us back to the middle ground of simulation vs. arcade. I agree with you that when you were here, the pendulum was shifted all the way to the arcade side, but that is not so anymore. Drop by some time and you may be surprised.

2. You say the previous ATM fired all staff and INS that wanted to teach realistic procedures. If you really simplify it down, you can get away with that half-ass excuse. Realistically though, he fired staff and INS because they wouldn't comply with his directives. His directives were to halt teaching realistic procedures, so the staff was fired for insubordination, and let's not forget, you were one of these staff members. Remember as a staff member of an ARTCC, including Instructors, you serve at the whim of the ATM, if you don't like how it's being run, you always have the option of leaving. If you don't follow the ATM's rules he always has the option to fire you. The reason that these directives were put in place is because ZAU was an FAA training grounds before he came in. It would take months for students to get any sort of training, and if their phraseology wasn't spot on to a T they wouldn't be passed. If they gave a pilot the wrong taxi routing they wouldn't be passed, hell, even if the controller stammered through 1 clearance the whole day they wouldn't be passed. Is any of that in the spirit of GRP? ABSOLUTELY NOT. We all may not agree with the content of GRP, why it was put in place, or just the general concept of it, but our superiors decided it was needed, so therefore we MUST follow it. I'm willing to bet if the powers that be took a "tour" of your training facility, they'd find another FAA proving ground. I mean really. Who in Gods name needs a 33 page ARTCCAM, a 136 page operations manual, a 113 page M98 specific SOP, and a 59 page specialist manual. And all of this is required reading for new controllers to ZMP??? I don't quite think that is in the "spirit of GRP".

Before you go calling out another facility, make sure you do your homework, and better yet, make sure your facility is in good operational order and in compliance with all policies and directives, and not about to crumble to bits and pieces.

DL

It's funny, Dan. Every time someone at another facility looks at our documents, the issue of page count comes up. I'd be far more inclined to field concerns about the length/breadth of our policies and procedures if people would actually look into reading the documents instead of simply tying page count to complexity. Those documents were written to be a comprehensive reference to working any position under any imaginable traffic level or circumstance, and aren't meant to be memorized. Furthermore, the 113-page M98 SOP is, if you peruse it more closely, approximately 50 pages of diagrams regarding airspace flows and delegations for our 8 different runway configurations, none of which are expected to be committed to memory.

The 59 page specialist manual to which you refer is our training syllabus which is only of concern to our training staff and not required reading for our students/controllers other than to provide an insight into the way their training will likely progress. We have a fairly strong commitment to standardization amongst our training staff which allows for increased flexibility in instructor/student pairings, and our training manual allows us to achieve this with greater efficiency.

In closing, I've heard more complaints about the page count of our SOPs from you and other outside observers than I have from our own students and controllers. I'd say that's a fairly telling fact. That being said, perhaps you ought to heed your own advise and do your homework prior to calling out our policies. Feel free to apply for visitor status and prove me wrong .

As it has been stated countless times before and as Dhruv has had to mentioned yet again here. I would appreciate questions to be asked and assumptions not be made.

Thanks!

Jason Vodnansky

Gary,

I will be emailing you with a statement directly regarding this from July.

And with evidence to support it as well as the students own Instructor recommendation.

Over 280 operations into and out of ZMP’s airspace, 17 controllers working live from Duluth, MN and an additional 10 controllers staffing ZMP, Minneapolis ARTCC has seen one of its most successful Northern Migration Events to date! Thank you to all those pilots who participated and neighboring ARTCC’s that were online.

Stay tuned as photos will soon be posted on our website of FNO, the Duluth Airshow featuring the USAF Thunderbird’s and a rare tour of the FAA MSP ATCT and M98 TRACON.

I would like to thank: Tim Boger, Cameron Negrete, Alex Zayas, Logan Gloss, Matt Bartels, Andy Duong, Dhruv Kalra, Chris Rolfe, Derek Hood, Antonio King, Nicholas Reed, Parker Payne, Tim Dryml, Matt Spencer, Alex Archer, Bob Pracheil and John Sewell for attending.

A special thank you to Loren and Kim Kuhnly who without their support in planning and hosting this event by welcoming us all into their home would not have made this event that it could have been.

What are your plans for 2012? Planning for Northern Migration V is already underway.