Responding to an urgent FAA need, I'm pleased to announce that VATUSA has entered into a new partnership with the FAA, MITRE, and Raytheon Technical Training Services Company to provide top-down ATC training to selected FAA controllers at the TRACON and Center level, effective immediately.
In the press release released last night from the FAA announcing the partnership, we received high praise for our ability to adapt to imperfect staffing levels, and that's precisely what the FAA is facing with the sequestration tower cuts. "We are thrilled to begin this partnership with VATUSA" said Len Romke, from the FAA Office Of Public Safety. "VATUSA, and VATSIM, are much more proficient at terminating services than the FAA controllers providing terminal radar control services who, although certified to do so, rarely had the need, and rarely got the practice. More importantly, and key to the success of this initiative," said Romke, "VATUSA controllers are well versed in the art of providing top-down service. In spite of the unfortunate circumstances we're being faced with, this is a great opportunity for these controllers to learn how to operate top-down so we can provide ATC down to the ground for the pilots who have been accustomed to such service in the past. Who knows? If this works, we may be able to start opening up other airspace that is currently not controlled and provide Tower and below service to dozens, hundreds, more fields. We've been looking for an opportunity to take over these fields for a long time."
Coding is being finalized as we speak, but ATMs can expect direct-entry roster additions for these real world controllers, who will be arriving with the new ATC rating of S4 to set them apart from everyone else and provide the needed flag that these guys are the real deal. The expectation, in order for VATUSA to meet its contract requirements, is for these controllers to be provided at least 5 hours of instruction and/or monitoring by VATUSA Instructors and/or Mentors, focused solely on providing top-down service at the affected airfields. That's it! Teach the controllers how to use an ATC client and teach Approach and Center controllers how to issue Local control instructions for five hours. What could be easier?
MITRE and Raytheon Technical Training Services personnel will monitor these controllers online for Quality Control purposes. When online, they will use the callsigns MIT_OBS and RAY_OBS, respectively.
This is truly a win-win for VATUSA and for the FAA; the FAA will learn new, important skills that are suddenly required by recent real-world events, and VATUSA will pick up upwards of 200 new controllers that, the hope is, will like controlling here enough they stay on with VATUSA for the long term. These experienced FAA controllers will be able to help us up our game and allow us to provide a more valuable service to the pilots we serve as well.
I'll publish more info in this thread as more information becomes available, and as questions come up that could use answers that are shared amongst us all. I hope you're all as excited at this opportunity as I am. Let's do this!
