Traffic Management Corner By Jenny Shepherd, Supervisory Traffic Management Coordinator at Boston ARTCC (ZBW) “How does air traffic control manage flights to Europe? Has the health emergency changed this?” Aircraft cross the Atlantic Ocean to travel between North America and Europe on the North Atlantic Tracks, or NATOTS. Creation of the tracks is a daily collaboration between Boston Center, NavCanada, and Shanwick Oceanic Control in the UK. All of the possible tracks are identified A (northern) through Z (southern) and have entry and exit waypoints. Each day a few of the possible tracks are chosen based on the location of the jet stream in order to reduce flight time and save fuel. Aircraft mostly cross the ocean in an easterly or westerly direction in twice daily pushes. Every morning, traffic management coordinators at Boston Center TMU coordinate with NavCanada to build the eastbound North Atlantic Track Advisory for that evening. These tracks create structure for the large volume of aircraft that cross the ocean; this allows for fix-balancing and an optimal non-radar transit. The creation of tracks is somewhat like connect-the-dots. NavCanada and Shanwick choose the crossing tracks and Oceanic Entry Points. Boston Center TMU creates specific routes for JFK, EWR, PHL, DC Metro, and ZBW overflight traffic to merge aircraft onto the tracks at the Oceanic Entry Points. Currently, due to the ongoing health emergency, there is a massive reduction of international volume. While there would normally be about half a dozen international tracks each day, now on some days there is just one route pub-
lished in each direction. The following pictorials show the difference in track structure on a typical summer day now compared to one two years ago. Traffic Management Corner is a new Q&A column by Jenny Shepherd. She has three years of TMU experience; she is a supervisory traffic management coordinator at Boston ARTCC and previously worked as a traffic management coordinator at Indianapolis ARTCC. Please submit your questions to her and she will answer them in an upcoming issue. Her email address is pwcinc.ane@gmail.com .
Tracks on one day of August 2018
Tracks on one day of August 2020 *Images from SkyVector.
How to Market Your Skills Post Retirement By Sue E. Meeks, President of Infina, Ltd. Are you ready to retire, or are you thinking about what you might want to do when you retire? Do you wonder how you can successfully make the switch from a federal employee to the corporate world? This is a question I get asked when chatting with professionals in the FAA. It’s a great question because we often hire former federal employees who join our company on FAA contracts. Let’s be
honest, it’s a difficult transition for many people. Here is are some things to consider: On the corporate side, we judge you on productivity in team settings; edit your resume to focus on accomplishments and not your previous job titles; and, leadership is about integrity and motivating a team. Let me translate these concepts and 28
