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Chuck 'Spad' Spadafore |
The Rocky Mountains of central Colorado have been greatly
affected by the fast-growing popularity of skiing. It wasn't long ago that the small
Colorado mountain community of Aspen came to realize this in a big way. Every year,
thousands of enthusiasts flocked to their town to ski their "hills," many of
them arriving by air. The amenities of Aspen were enjoyed by the general aviation
community as well as some very successful mountain commuter airlines (Rocky Mountain and
Aspen Airways).
Some history
At the time, the Aspen Airport was served only by a VFR tower, and had neither radar
nor a navaid serving the airport for an IFR approach (except for some special airline-only
approaches developed by the commuters). ATC services were provided by Denver Center, whose
radar coverage was virtually non-existent below 13,000' MSL. Because of the lack of decent
radar coverage, ATC had to handle IFR operations to and from Aspen using non-radar
procedures-one in and one out. VFRs received vectors "down the valley." If you
couldn't cancel or execute a visual approach, you went somewhere else. Not much else could
be done with what we had.
Soon, traffic volume and complexity far exceeded the Center's capability to provide for
the safe, efficient and orderly movement of aircraft under these difficult conditions. The
FAA established a slot reservation program during ski season. Delays were routinely
measured in hours, and flights were often turned away if they didn't have the appropriate
reservation "slot time" or arrive within the appropriate "window" for
that slot time. Extra controllers were assigned to plug in to those "ski
country" sectors as a "third set of eyes," and other sectors were
instructed to "miss" the Aspen sector with enroute traffic and hold Aspen
arrivals at outlying intermediary fixes. Things were, very simply, getting out of hand.
Then came
Aspen Approach. Through pressure exerted on Washington by the flying community, a
congressional mandate ordered a radar approach control facility be established at Aspen.
This added to the ATC system a transponder-only terminal radar site for Aspen, plus a
navaid (the Red Table VOR/DME, identifier DBL) to serve the airport with an IFR approach,
and a gap-filler radar site for the Center located near DBL. The terminal radar gave ATC
the ability to sequence IFR traffic with 3 mile separation, and to radar separate arrivals
from departures. The result was that most of the traffic problems at Aspen went away.
Deja vu all over again?
But does history repeat itself? It does, and it has. Welcome to Eagle, Colorado.
The very same problems faced at Aspen in previous years are now manifesting themselves
25 miles north at the Eagle County Regional Airport, the airport that serves the Vail and
Beaver Creek ski resorts. Once small county airport with hardly any IFR operations, EGE is
now the third fastest-growing commercial airport in the nation — second only to Colorado
Springs and North Las Vegas, according to DOT figures — and is fast becoming the number
one Colorado ski country destination and busiest mountain terminal area in the country.
In 1989, barely 300 air carrier passenger enplanements were recorded at Eagle. By 1995,
there were nearly 90,000 reported. At the end of the 1996-1997 ski season, that number had
doubled to nearly 180,000. The air carriers say the will begin year-round service to Eagle
as early as 1998, and expect traffic volume to double again within the next two years to
well over 300,000 passenger enplanements. Keep in mind that the great majority of this
traffic takes place within the six-month period from November to April. While these
figures deal strictly with air carrier operations, general aviation traffic at Eagle is
experiencing similar growth.
You can now fly non-stop to Eagle from such places as ORD, DTW, ATL, DFW, MSP, IAH,
LAX, EWR, LGA, IAD, MIA, SLC and of course DEN. Where once you might have spotted a single
DHC-7 commuter or two on the ramp at Eagle, you can now see a vast assortment of B757's,
B727's, B737's, BA46's and others. The airlines are spending big money to develop
facilities at Eagle. American Airlines for example, is pumping millions of dollars into
the airport to handle their B757 operations. They have built their own terminal and
developed their own FMS approach and departure procedures. Both Northwest (B757's) and
Delta (B727's) have followed suit. Even Air Wisconsin (BA46's), United (B737's) and
Continental (B757's) are getting into the act. They have recognized a business opportunity
and are capitalizing on it.
ATC at EGE
And how is ATC handling it? Well, basically, we're not! We're reliving yesteryear at
Aspen. It's basically a non-radar airport, because even with the DBL gap-filler radar
site, we can't see below 9,000' to 9,500' MSL within a 5 to 10 mile radius of the airport.
It has a VFR tower operated by a contractor (Midwest ATC Services, Inc.), and that tower
is only there because the air carriers forced the issue. In fact, scheduled closing time
at Eagle tower is 7:00 pm local, but the controllers often stay on duty until 10:00 or
11:00 pm until the last air carrier flight has arrived, with their overtime pay picked up
by the airlines.
Eagle
does have navaids and IFR approach procedures. But because of the non-radar environment,
IFR at EGE is basically a one-in, one-out affair. To make matters worse, take a look at
the LOC DME-C approach: it's 33 NM from the initial approach fix (Kremmling VOR,
identifier RLG) to the airport, and it usually takes an aircraft 10 to 12 minutes to
execute the published approach. If (heaven forbid) the aircraft misses the approach, it's
another 23 NM to the missed approach fix (JESIE intersection) and 20 NM more back to RLG.
Adding it all up, if you fly the approach, go missed, and want to try it again, you will
have flown 76 NM and literally "tied up" the airspace for nearly a half hour!
Talk about being handcuffed! Expeditious handling under these conditions is a whopping 4
aircraft an hour, and that's if we're lucky.
Fortunately, the weather at Eagle is VFR much of the time. Although the air carriers
never cancel IFR and seldom accept a visual approach, many general aviation operators do,
and that helps boost the acceptance rate. But when weather conditions drop to MVFR or IFR
or when pilots who are unfamiliar with the area prefer (understandably) not to cancel, the
system gets easily backlogged and severely overloaded. At Denver Center, the controllers
feel like they're trying to pour a gallon of water into a quart jar without being able to
see the jar and trying not to spill a drop.
Flow control
The FAA has a plan to deal with this problem. Unfortunately, it comes as the expense of
our "customers" and adversely affects general aviation most of all.
Every year between about Thanksgiving and mid-April, Denver Center's Traffic Management
Unit (a.k.a "flow control") implements a "ski country" program. What
this basically does is schedule a certain number of arrivals into a particular airport
during each one-hour period, based on a specific acceptance rate determined ahead of time
based on factors such as forecast weather, equipment outages, etc. The idea, of course, is
to hold ski-country-bound IFR departures on the ground as necessary so that they don't
overwhelm our capacity to handle arrivals. Sounds reasonable, but it's got several
problems.
For one thing, all that this program does is to control departure times. Any delays
that occur enroute (vectors for traffic, deviations around weather, equipment problems,
etc.) renders the ETA useless. Apply Murphy's Law and you'll see that instead of the
steady stream of arrivals that we're supposed to get, the aircraft tend to arrive in
bunches.
For another, the TMU's method of "slot" scheduling discriminates severely
against general aviation. This occurs because the TMU automatically pencils in scheduled
air carrier operations into its hourly slots first, then makes any remaining slots
available to general aviation. So, for example, it's IFR at Eagle and TMU sets the
acceptance rate at six aircraft per hour (about normal), and if there are six air carrier
arrivals scheduled to arrive during a particular hour, there would be no slots left
for G.A. operators. During some hours, only 1 or 2 air carriers are scheduled to arrive at
EGE; during other hours, as many as 5 are scheduled. Furthermore, if EGE weather goes down
low enough that the TMU thinks there's a reasonable chance of missed approaches, it lowers
the acceptance rate to just two aircraft per hour (remember, it takes a half-hour
to shoot the approach and miss). Under such circumstances, the chance of a G.A. operator
getting into EGE are between slim and none. Feel like a second-class citizen yet?
When the weather is forecast to be VFR, no slot program is implemented. While this
might seem to be good news, that's not necessarily so. Even in VFR weather, the IFR
acceptance rate doesn't increase to much over six aircraft an hour because of the
non-radar one-in/one-out environment. So with an unlimited flow of IFR aircraft headed for
RLG, you can expect delay vectors and/or holding at outlying fixes while we juggle the
arrivals to establish the necessary miles-in-trail. If that doesn't sound good, you can
always cancel IFR...but you better have your head on a swivel. Last year, an air carrier
did take evasive action in response to a TCAS alert to avoid traffic during the occurrence
of a very complex ATC operational error that resulted in loss of standard separation
between aircraft in the sector. I highly recommend never departing for Eagle with anything
less than your maximum available fuel load and, if it's IFR, a precisely blueprinted
alternate plan. We're still dealing with a quart jar here.
To make matters worse...
When the
new Denver International Airport opened, Denver Center realigned the vertical and lateral
boundaries of the sectors surrounding the Denver terminal area. The western boundary of
the sector handling westbound departures off DEN (Sector 6) was extended approximately 35
NM west to reach out nearly 100 NM west of DEN, and now encompasses Eagle Airport and one
each of the major Aspen arrival and departure gate streams. The once easily-controlled
sector with a single basic mission, overnight became an unmanageable nightmare with a trio
of terminal difficulties.
It was all these factors—ineffective flow controls, inferior equipment and an
ominously supersaturated sector—that prompted me to file an Unsatisfactory Condition
Report in January of 1997. The FAA has still not responded to this filing, having given
themselves (to date) six extensions to the required time period for providing such a
response. They have now given themselves until January 1, 1998—nearly a full year from
the original filing date and two months into ski season—to think about it.
But this is not to say that the solution is simply to move the boundary back. The
sector that gave up the Eagle airport to sector 6 was similarly overburdened. That sector
(Sector 11), prior to the resectorization, provided approach control services to not only
Eagle, but Hayden, Steamboat Springs, Grand Junction and other mountain airports, all of
them experiencing fast-paced growth. The sector was also responsible for the other three
arrival and two departure gate streams serving Aspen.
Geographically, sector 11 covered nearly the entire state of Colorado west of the
Continental Divide. An effective sector "scan" was a near-impossible task for
one controller. To make matters worse, the need for multiple communications sites to cover
the huge mountainous area meant that aircraft frequently "stepped on" clearances
and readbacks. It was simply too much airspace for one person to handle. Something clearly
had to be done.
The resectorization did help sector 11 (by shrinking it), but it hurt sector 6 (by
expanding it). Moving the sector boundary back is not the answer. The problem is the huge
increase in traffic at these airports (especially Eagle), and it's not going to be solved
by robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Is there a solution?
We think
so. We are a group of controllers and members of the National Air Traffic Controllers
Association that are petitioning the FAA and Congress for the development of a new
"Mountain Approach Control Facility" to be located in Grand Junction, Colo. This
facility would take on the responsibility of providing approach control services to the
Aspen, Eagle, Rifle and Grand Junction airports collectively. It would combine the current
Aspen and Grand Junction approach control facilities and take all the airspace in between,
including Eagle to the north. It would be staffed by the personnel currently assigned to
Aspen Approach and Grand Junction Tower, and relieve Denver TRACON of the burden entirely.
[The present ATC situation at Grand Junction is also quite controversial, and a
controller at Denver Approach has filed another Unsatisfactory Condition Report with the
FAA over the fact that approach control service at GJT is provided using non-ARTS (i.e.,
non-approach certified) radar via a 300-mile-long chain of sixteen microwave links and
other communications relays over the Continental Divide to Denver TRACON. But that's
another story.]
Many of the logistics involved in the creation of Mountain Approach Control have
already been addressed by NATCA. The Walker Field Airport Authority (Grand Junction) has
offered to make the portion of the air traffic control tower building not currently being
leased by the FAA available to house the new facility. Hardware and software vendors have
been contacted, and we have received estimates of "off the shelf" products
available today for system integration and modernization. Personnel issues have been
outlined (moves, staffing, training, etc.). And all the while, our cost projections have
remained in check. In fact, what we have proposed would be considerably less expensive
that what the GAO estimates will be the cost of the modernization projects currently
budgeted by the FAA (such as STARS). We believe that our proposal would return the level
of ATC service in the Rocky Mountain area to what the users expect from it, while the
FAA's current plans do not address the issues in our judgment.
How you can help
In order for this to happen, we could use a little help. We realize that if we simply
wait for the FAA bureaucracy to adopt our proposal for Mountain Approach Control, we'll
probably reach retirement age before anything happens. It took a tremendous lobbying
effort by users and a congressional mandate to get the facility built at Aspen, and we
think it will take another to get a Mountain Approach Control facility built in Grand
Junction. In the short term, we need the FAA to commit the resources to install one more
radar site at Eagle, and we need to prevent the FAA from carrying out it's current plan to
contract out the operation of Grand Junction tower in early to mid-1998.
So in September, a group of NATCA representatives traveled to Washington D.C. to meet
with representatives of Colorado's congressional and senatorial delegations to present the
Mountain Approach Control proposal. That got the ball rolling. Through the months of
October and November, several meetings have been called with legislators and users alike
to discuss the proposal. We are currently embarking on a letter-writing campaign to convey
support of the proposal to Colorado's Legislators. We have an open invitation to them, or
anyone, to come to Denver Center and see the operation, and fully expect some visits this
winter.
Our Mountain Approach Control proposal (a 74-page document) goes into considerable
detail on how the proposed facility would work and what resources it would need. To make
it more accessible to interested parties, we have posted the proposal on the World Wide
Web at http://www.sni.net/~spad. We invite you to
look it over. If you'd like more information, feel free to drop me a line at spad@sni.net, or visit our "Contact" page on the
web for a detailed list of government, legislative and local contacts. If you like what
you see and would like to let Colorado's Legislators know, visit our "Write Colo.'s
Senate" and "Write Colo.'s Congress" page for sample letters we're using in
our letter writing campaign. Copy and mail them to our representatives if you're so
inclined. We surely would appreciate your support.
We think our proposal resolves many of the issues of safety and service in Colorado's
ski country that exist today and will get worse tomorrow. We also realize how difficult it
is to justify projects such as this, and ultimately pry the funds from very tight
congressional budgetary hands. Facilities all across the nation need help. But our basis
is sound and our direction clear. We are committed to preserving over the skies of Western
Colorado the quality of safety and service of the caliber that is expected of the finest
air traffic system in the world. You should demand nothing less.
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