[9/10/2021 2300z - 0300z] The JFK FNO

[Umar Ashraf]

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)

[Alexandra Robison]

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.

[Finn Hutter]

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

[Dylan Lundberg]

[Ryan Pitt]

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.

[Finn Hutter]

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).

[Jackson Gilliam]

[Malcolm Furman]

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.

[Dylan Lundberg]

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....

[Daniel Everman]

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?

[Bobby Melton]

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.

[Alex Ying]

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.

[Jack Clark]

hi

[Aymen Youssef]

[Noah Consolati]

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.