Hello March!

Dear C Area,

A big first and foremost - Congrats and High 5’s to Zeke & Jeydi for certifying on their respective D sides and finishing their first stage of D-Side training! Congrats to all who aided in their success - well done everyone!

I’m gonna see if I can remember everything I wanted to share with you, so bear with me here..

Shanna is back and about ready to come train on the floor. Very excited to see you again, lady!

We had a meeting with the A Area a couple weeks ago to discuss a few things.

• Metering

• The new ILS into EAT

• Altitudes with metering

• Discussed some alternatives for sequencing SF50s and other very slow jets

You can expect to get briefed on the trial period for altitudes during metering. We are still working out the details on the rest of it. Though - my hope is to have a procedure figured out for the EAT ILS before it goes into effect in July.

We are also waiting to finalize our LOA with ZLC. It has been quite the process and I appreciate your patience with it.

Article 5 - We are still in need of someone to help out with the R side class starting in June for Thursday and Friday every week. The other 3 days have been covered already, so please let me or a sup know if you’re interested in that. The dates are posted in the area. Thanks!

Crumbley vacation - I will be out of the country 4/8-4/12. Devin Carlisto will be available in my absence. Additionally, he has agreed to be the Alternate Rep for the C Area, something I really appreciate!

LWS - I’m seriously about to field trip over there. They have a new crop (again…!) of controllers and there are a lot of growing pains. I have been in touch with management and airspace about all the shenanigans going on, and there are a lot of people working to resolve it. Them. It all. Please keep me posted if weird things are happening and I’ll continue to be persistent (or annoy, whatever word choice you like) those who can help us out. Referencing aircraft who are out runway heading, the tower is not issuing this. It sounds like it’s an airline issue, so we will go from here on that one. Hopefully, now that LWS knows about it, they can help on their end.

Schedule - I heard a lot of feedback that we didn’t need the 1600 every day. So, we amended the schedule to help controllers with fatigue mitigation by bringing those shifts up by a half hour. As it turns out, the changes have left the late swing shift a bit short between 2200-2230 when and if a 3rd position needs to be staffed. I have run this up the chain and as it stands now, if management wants to hold people over or assign another body to a 1530 without shorting the 1430, that is what will happen. Opening up MOUs for Mid-Term negotiations is undesirable and can be risky, but I will for sure keep this in mind when we negotiate guides for next year. If you think of another resolution you’d like to see, please let me know.

Meter times - Now that we’re seeing the RADDY and JAKSN times, we are using the meter fix time. There is no longer an outer fix for us, this is mainly for the D & B areas.

Frequency issues on the mid - It has come to my attention that frequencies have not been correct from ZLC during the configuration on the mid. Know that Mike Sellman has been made aware of this and will follow up with ZLCs FTR when he gets back to the facility. Please reach out to me or MD if you’re still seeing an issue.

I feel like there might be more that I’m missing, but thank you all for your dedication and make sure to get out there and enjoy that sunshine this weekend! Happy St Patricks Day!! Lucky Charms is on sale at Costco :D

Cheers!

Crumbley

360-635-8244

Article 5

I know I’ve sent a lot of emails lately, so thank you for your patience and for reading them!

DT has volunteered to help with the 3 R sides Monday - Wednesdays. Thank you Blaser! We are in need of someone willing to volunteer to do the R sides Thursdays and Fridays. I understand it’s summer and there are a lot of leave requests during this time, and we will work with you on that.

Please let me know if you’re interested in those 2 days per week! 6/23-8/18

Thank you!

Crumbley

PDT CHINS Arrivals

Happy Monday C Area

There has been some discussion about CHINS arrivals coming from 16 that aren’t direct PDT, but it would seem that the flight either filed that way or was issued a short cut somewhere before they got to ZSE. If you’re seeing this, please jot down the call sign, date & time, or leave a strip in my headset box with the date on it so we can research this and get it resolved.

Still looking for volunteers for the 2 Article 5 details - the dates for these are in previous emails. Let me know if you need more info on this.

We’re still waiting to get the LOA back from ZLC with our proposed changes. I will keep you posted when we hear from them.

I’ve also been asked to address the LOA between us & GEG about IR325 (the one that cuts the west side of GEG and then turns west into MWH). I need to reach out to their FacRep and I will pass along the request to maybe just tell them we will watch the aircraft on the IR route and they can hand them off to MWH since that seems to be what’s happening.

Have a great week, as always, please reach out if you need anything or have questions. I will do my best to get you answered ASAP.

Crumbley

360-635-8244

Updates

It’s like I just sent out an email, but luckily for me that was last month, so I’m good!

I reached out to Spokane today to check in and give a heads up about some things that I’ve been noticing. One was an instance I had a couple times about a week ago where an aircraft off GEG during CARP was requesting FL220 but was climbing to FL230. I also have noticed that sometimes when they call us, they’re identifying themselves as “Spokane” and not including if it’s Yakima, Pasco or Missoula. The FacRep was very receptive to both and will reach out to the membership about these items to keep an eye out on them.

She brought up to me that they have been getting a lot of arrivals above 160 with no APREQs. She’s not asking for more calls, but this is a friendly reminder to do our best to follow the letter and get arrivals down. We are still negotiating our LOA with ZLC and I can try to bring up getting control for GEG arrivals, but I have also been noticing they are starting those aircraft down before they get to our boundary. There are those instances (especially with military arrivals during break ups and things like that) where it is hard to get an arrival down, but overall we can be more positive on providing GEG altitudes that conform more with the letter.

There was some discussion about Seattle Terminal Arrivals flying over YKM and whether or not there’s a requirement for them to be crossing YKM at FL240. Currently, the way it reads it does not appear that that is required, but I have asked the A & C area airspace reps to review this and perhaps write it in a way that is not ambiguous or left up to interpretation.

Please let me know if you have any questions about any of this. I will keep you posted as things come up.

Have a great rest of your week!

Crumbley

360-635-8244

List of opportunities for you

Hey there C Area, and happy last day of January!

I’ll keep this short and sweet…

First - working on getting together with the A area to go over the metering changes and discuss some options for altitude during metering, the YKM area when we are on a north flow to prevent a gazillion point outs to lows, and the new ILS into EAT. I will keep you posted when we get this scheduled and what comes of it.

There are 3 opportunities for you to help and it would really be appreciated.

Area Refresher - It is the week of May 13th and we need to know by 2/10 who would be interested in doing this. To the best of my knowledge, Jared will be the supervisor who you would be working with. You will get time to prepare before it starts, so as soon as we know who would like to help with this, we can get you scheduled time off the floor to prep.

Article 5 - Still in need of 1 or 2 people who can do the M-F schedule 6/23-8/17 with the 3 R sides.

Article 5 - 2 D side trainees Sun-Th or M-F 8/18-10/12

Let me know if you have any questions about this, and thank you for your help.

Crumbley

360-635-8244

Behind the walls....

Hi C Area -

Please check the area behind the control room where the shelf of stuff is, and where mystery clothes have been hanging for an indefinite amount of time. If anything belongs to you, please take it home by 2/11. Of this year. After 2/11, everything back there will be either thrown away or donated to Goodwill down the street, so you can find it there.

If you can’t get to your stuff for any reason, please reach out to me. There appears to be all kinds of kitchen items buried back there, so please double check everything.

Thanks! Have a really great week!

Crumbley

360-635-8244

Thursday 1/25 ERC

Hi C Area -

The ERC (Events Review Committee) is here today and tomorrow, and is available for you to sit in on their process as they review ATSAP reports.

I highly encourage you to sit in with them for a bit and listen to what they do and how they work. This is your opportunity to see the first process the ATSAP information goes through.

If you do decide to go, you will be required to sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) as the information they will be discussing and reviewing is confidential in nature. Not an invitation to discuss what you saw or heard as soon as you return to the floor.

I sat in on a meeting with them and members of the E-board today. The major take aways for me are:

They receive upwards of 100-120 submissions per week

They work hard to reach out to the submitters with any questions or follow-ups, so please make sure your information is correct in ATSAP.

Be as factual as possible with (preferably) more than 1 example (with dates, times and callsigns if able) of the issue so they can take it to whomever needs it to start the investigative process.

It is not a resource for calling controllers out on personnel issues. We have other avenues for that. If you are in need of guidance or have questions about this, please let me know.

This program is a resource for you and the operation. Please utilize it constructively.

I brought up the fact that I’ve heard over and over from controllers that they never see any results from their ATSAP reports. Some of the replies I got:

The report wasn’t very detailed, or just mentioned something about “the frequencies/radar/etc suck”. Again - details they can work with, and examples to give them to research.

They tried reaching out to the submitter to ask follow up questions for clarification and never heard back. Verify your contact info is up to date in your ATSAP account.

They did say that a lot of the fliers and bulletins that are online or in facilities aren’t updated as often as they should be, so it sounds like they are at least aware of that.

I will try to be more transparent about ATSAP-initiated fixes in our area. If you file an ATSAP and you don’t feel like there was ever anything that came of it, please reach out and let me know and I will follow up. It may be something I’m working on in the background and we are waiting to hear back from the other party or something I didn’t even realize was an ATSAP issue.

For all you OJTIs - if you need to file an ATSAP report due to a training event or something during training you saw, please ask for the time to walk your trainee through setting up their ATSAP account and have them also fill out a report. It is a great opportunity for them to have some help for the first few times!

Thank you all for everything you do, and have a great rest of your week!

Crumbley

360-635-8244

Couple more things...

C Area Info for you,

A - High 5’s and big congrats to Jeydi for certifying on D07/11! Well done to everyone involved in her success!

2 - The Article 5 that starts in June - I know it’s a lot to ask for one person to be doing all the scenarios for 3 R side students, so after talking with the training department and management, I thought I would throw out there the option to have 2 people share the time in the training department. If you are interested in this but don’t want to do it all 5 days, please let me or a supervisor know. We will work something out!

D - I talked to airspace today, we are working on getting SFF’s contact info easily accessible to the D side on 18. It’s in ERIDS, but if we suddenly have to take over GEG, that’s not the time to be glued to that screen for info we should have ready for ya. I will continue to pursue this.

Have a great rest of your week - thank you for all you do!

Crumbley

360-635-8244

*Correction

Heya C Area -

I have an updated schedule for the 3 R side students. It will still be Monday-Friday, but the dates are now from 6/23-8/17.

Additionally, we are looking for an Artice 5 for 2 D side students, this will have the option of Sun-Th or M-F schedule, as they are not going to run labs on Fridays. The dates for this are 8/18-10/12.

Please let me or a sup know if you are interested in either of these details.

Spokane went ATC-0 Saturday evening for a short time due to a fire alarm. It came to our attention we do not have contact info for SFF under glass at lows, so I am looking into getting the shout line info added to our list of tower contacts, and adding their tower frequency to that respective list. I will let you know what comes of it.

Sick leave - if you are calling in sick, please keep it short and simple. “Please show me on sick leave”. No details as to why you don’t feel well or who it is you’re caring for if that’s the case. But - reasons like: my kid is sick. I have an appointment. I’m taking a family member to an appointment. I don’t feel well. If there is any pressure for info past this, please let me know. When we put our reasons in web scheduler, the sups don’t see it - it’s for tracking purposes for something above my pay grade. If you put a request in web scheduler, make sure you call with it if you’re not already at work. These are general examples, the main point here is to not get into a detailed conversation about your sick leave use over the phone, or give management any reasons to pry further. Please let me know if you have any questions about this.

Have a great week, thanks for all you do!

Crumbley

360-635-8244

Metering info

One more email -

I spoke with TMU today to get some clarification on the meter fix times.

The times we are showing now with the RTIME and JTIME are the actual RADDY & JAKSN crossing times.

When we start metering, use the meter fix time. Not the outer fix time. The outer fix time is more for the D & B area at this point since we’re just using the same fixes as the A area.

I have asked about having only 1 time, but that would take meetings and get togethers and all kinds of things, so let’s just go with this for now.

Let me know if you have any questions about this

Crumbley

360-635-8244

Updates

Hi C Area -

First & foremost, a big round of High 5’s and congrats to Alex Mathers for ending his training journey at ZSE and joining the ranks of CPC! Well done to everyone involved in this accomplishment!

There has been talk in the past about changing the direction of the data tags when they first come to our area. If you have a preference, I will be keeping track of what everyone is wanting and let you know the results before anything permanent is done. Please reach out and let me know what you prefer.

An Article 5 solicitation was posted today. It is for 3 R side students and will run from 6/23 - 8/3. This will be a Monday-Friday option for the schedule only, as they will be running scenarios on Friday. Please let me or a sup know ASAP if you are interested in this. **If you are currently on a 5-4-9 or 4/10 shift, this would mean you would be on a 5-8 day-shift schedule M-F.

I can’t think of anything else I was going to send out, which probably means I’m forgetting something.

Have a good rest of your week, and please reach out if you have any questions or need any further explanation on anything here.

Thanks for all you do! :)

Crumbley

360-635-8244

Happy New Year

Happy 2024 C Area! I know I’m a little behind, but still wanted to share my salutations with you all! Here’s hoping to a great year, and I will continue to do my best to be as transparent as possible with you when it comes to the goings on in the area.

Last week, there was a UAL aircraft that departed MSO on the DIDLY5 departure. If you’ve never seen it (which I wasn’t alone in this catagory), check it out. It departs and one of the transitions goes to MLP, which wouldn’t normally be an issue, except this guy was going somewhere out east, so he was climbing out in the face of our departures, just to turn around and go the other way. Glenn reached out to ops and verified that was a mistake on the dispatchers part. We shouldn’t see that normally, but please keep me posted if you see anything strange with this.

If you haven’t heard, JJ did an amazing job with an aircraft in distress last week on lows. Major icing issues caused this aircraft to descend quickly and it was assumed they went down, until a relay from a DAL aircraft was able to verify they were safe on the ground. So many people to name in all this, but well done everyone! Your use of resources and teamwork had a positive outcome, and the pilot called the facility to thank you all for saving their lives. Always great to have a success story and share in some good news!!

We have 2 new controllers who are upstairs in the training department, please help me welcome Scotty Cardona and Robert Marshall! They have been to the floor a couple of times, but won’t start training probably until the fall. I’ll keep you posted on their progress.

Some reminders for ya -

If you test positive for COVID, call the facility and talk to an OM or sup. The flight surgeon doesn’t do anything with this any longer.

If you’ve never used the Virtual Flight Surgeon, you are missing out on an incredible resource. They are fantastic about getting back to us and are always available. Lately, I’ve been going through some not fun medical stuff, and they have been absolutely excellent to work with. They even sent all my paperwork to the flight surgeon when it was all completed, and followed up with me if they hadn’t heard from me in a few days to ensure I was getting everything done and didn’t need any further assistance. Your dues pay for this service, so please utilize it! The phone number is 866-237-6633. Save this number in your phone and call them anytime with questions. They have a website you can check medication restrictions as well Homepage - AMAS (aviationmedicine.com). They have a NATCA page, so check out their website, save it to your favorites. There is a flier on the NATCA board outside of the entrance to the control room if you would like to see another resource.

The transitional pay period and pay raise starts on Sunday. Since we still have a couple of controllers not on the floor and a couple still in training, shift balancing is going to be a thing for a while. Carly does an excellent job tracking the amount of shift balances everyone has, and if you ever want to see this list, please let me know. I would be happy to share it with you. I know it’s frustrating, but the MOU does state “reasonable effort will be made to publish employees on their selected lines”. Please be patient with the schedule as we try to keep everyone as close to their bid lines as possible.

Thank you for all you do, and please reach out if you have any questions about anything. I am happy to help!

Have a great week!

Crumbley

360-635-8244

Leave Requests

Hi C Area,

Carly & I have verified that all the leave from all the rounds has been entered correctly, and we have our time for leave requests that opens in Web Scheduler.

Sunday 12/31 at 0200. This coming Sunday morning at 2:00am.

If there are any requests entered before 2:00am on Sunday 12/31, they will be deleted.

There will be reminder sign in the area by the sign in computer to let everyone know.

If you have any questions about this, please reach out!

Thanks,

Crumbley

360-635-8244

Round 5 2.0

Good morning C Area!

I hope this sunny morning finds you well, and you enjoyed your holiday with friends, family, or friends who are like family.

A big congrats to Zeke who certified on D47/48!! Well done to all who helped in his success, great job everyone!

An update I forgot to share with you a while ago, and for that I’m sorry. I talked to Dan about the wording in the route chan about 18 has control from 31 for KMWH arrivals. He and I agree - if the aircraft is in 31’s airspace, regardless of who you got the handoff from, you have control of that aircraft. Please let me know if you have any questions about this.

In regard to us going through DIABLO to 12 or 31’s airspace, I talked to Dan about this as well. You can expect that if you don’t reach out to the A area and tell them that the airspace isn’t occupied, you will probably get a call or a visit. I tried to talk about this and explain that we are the controlling agency for the airspace, but it did not get anywhere, so I want to share with you that the conversation has been had, and that was the result. If you want more information about this, I would be happy to share it with you, just not in an email.

Round 5…. So, I think I boogered it up by not putting everyone’s accumulated leave balance in before I started the round, falsely presuming that it wouldn’t get down that far…. I am going to reach out to those who bid days individually and restart this round with everyone’s accumulated leave balance in so there will be no hiccups. I’m sorry for the delay and confusion, BidATC isn’t a team player sometimes and as much time as I spent trying to pause it and restart it with balances in there, I’m done playing with it and I’m going to start it over.

Thank you guys for all you do, especially those who worked the past few days. I appreciate you all and hope you have a great rest of your week and a very Happy New Year! Looking forward to what 2024 has for us!

Crumbley

360-635-8244

New Round

Hi there C Area,

I started round 4 tonight. If you’re an 8 hour earner, you have 6 days you can bid this round (unless you’ve heard different from me).

I’ll start round 5 as soon as possible after 4 is over, and will update you as to how many slots will be left to bid based on your accumulated leave.

News about total time - there is a lot that goes into it from a planning perspective, but Eric & I met with some of the guys from the FAST team last week. We have named the list “JTIME” (for JAKSN time) and “RTIME” (for RADDY time). These will show you the total delay from those fixes and we will continue the trial period for another month, which should allow for us to meet again (it’s been hard to get everyone together) to discuss the altitude restriction on top of what we’ve been doing with the speeds. Expect to get a briefing about this soon.

I haven’t heard anything in the past few days about LWS, here’s hoping things have improved there and the LOA is being reviewed a bit more frequently.

I will be off work the 21-27th, but I will be available if you are in need of anything. Please understand, if I text you about bidding, it is a gentle reminder and I am trying my very best to keep the process moving as quickly as possible so we don’t lose out on any more slots in January. I hope you don’t take it as me being impatient or trying to bother you.

Thank you for your understanding and help with this process.

Have a great week, and reach out if you are in need of anything!

Take care,

Crumbley

360-635-8244

Great Job!

Hi C Area!

We’re doing great getting through round 2, and should be able to start round 3 soon. This is the “shotgun” round, where you can bid 5 consecutive or non-consecutive days.

C-Cret Santa envelopes were left in your headset box, please let me know if you have any questions about that. I was a bit behind this year and I apologize, but try to have your C-Cret gift under the tree sometime before next week.

Glenn & Jared spoke with the SERCO QA person about LWS. She will be putting guidance and direction out to the facility about following the LOA, but if you are still seeing issues, please continue telling a sup or myself. Include the call sign, time and a brief description of what happened. This accurate information is what is making it easy for Glenn to pull the info and send it to QA.

Have a great rest of your week, and thanks again for all you do!

Crumbley

360-635-8244

READ - Round 2

Hey there -

Please have your AWS requests into my headset box ASAP. We will be reviewing them Thursday (tomorrow). If you aren’t at work, text or email me and I’ll make sure your request is a part of it all.

C-Cret Santa - I’ve been behind all season, but please fill out a form and put it in the envelope if you would like to participate. I’m hoping to have this done soon, maybe tomorrow or Friday.

Request for IST instructors - the cadre class will be 1/30-31 or 2/1-2. The workforce class dates will be 4/21-5/4. Please let me know if you’re interested in being a cadre.

Trainee bidding began today, and I will begin round 2 soon. Remember - this is still 1 consecutive week (can be around your RDOs but not skip over a full slot, if that makes sense). Let me know if you have any questions about this.

MOU copies should be in the area and will be downloaded on the bidding website soon if they aren’t already. I’m available if you have questions about any of them.

I met with a member of the FAST team and with Matt Snodgrass today talking about total delay times. We still need to go over some specifics with the A area and ensure we’ve taken everything into consideration, but I appreciate those who took the time to respond and give me input I could bring to the group. There will be another meeting tomorrow with the FAST team to solidify some more info, I will share it with you as soon as I know more.

Please let me know if you have any questions on any of this, and thanks again for all your patience with everything lately.

Crumbley

360-635-8244

READ - AWS Requests

Hi C Area -

Bidding is finally coming to a close for round 1. Thank you for your timely response in getting us through this process. I also appreciate the timely responses to texts. This has been a VERY stressful time for me, and I appreciate those who decided to not add to that stress.

I am putting AWS request sheets in the area. In the spirit of being timely, please have these filled out and in my headset box by Thursday so we can have time to review them before the schedule starts to be amended for the first pay period of the year. I know this is a quick turn around, and if for some reason you’re not able to put in your request by then, please reach out and I will fill it out for you or we will work something else out. I am not trying to exclude anyone in this process, but again, I have been having to wait until we were at least close to being done with bidding to get these out to you.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this process. The form is the same as last year, let us know what you’re looking for and we will evaluate it.

Have a good week,

Crumbley
360-635-8244

Metering

Hi there,

If you have any feedback about the total delay with metering, please let me know ASAP. We are hoping to meet soon to make things permanent or amend what we’re doing, so please email me your thoughts, concerns, suggestions, etc. I want to make sure I have it in writing so I don’t mess it up. If I have questions about what you’re saying, I will let you know.

Thank you! Have a great week! (C-Cret Santa!!!!!!!)

Crumbley

360-635-8244

READ - Bidding info!

Hi C Area,

I am sorry to say, I lied to you in one of my last emails. The B area was continuing to collaborate on guides and a schedule, but it should be completed today and the facility should be on track to start bidding tomorrow late morning/early afternoon. The plan is for us to have the AL bidding begin with Chris Johnson and the line selection will continue where we left off.

If you have not attended an MOU briefing, PLEASE make every effort to attend one tomorrow (Thursday). If you are unable to attend one, the MOUs should be uploaded on BidATC and you can review them there. If you have any questions about them, please let me know.

Our Schedule - I am hearing there is confusion about some of the shifts. Please reach out to me if you have a specific question, but I will try to address them the best I can here.

Management had concerns with overlap in the mornings between the day and mid shifts. They proposed a 2230NF shift for the mid (which is a core shift for the facility). We are circumventing this by having 1 shift M-F be a 0530NF. There is no need for one on Sunday mornings, and I tried keeping the need for these shifts at a minimum, hence they also are not on Saturday mornings. You can absolutely still flex on a 0600.

Because we weren’t able to continue the bid on paper, the schedules will be what they will be in BidATC. There is no way to change them once we enter them, so if you have a specific request or shift that you would like to change, you may make that request once we’re done with bidding and we put out the paper request forms in the area.

If you are thinking you might bid one of the 5-4-9 lines, please let me know. The stipulations for the these shifts are a bit lengthy. This way we can make sure you are fully aware of them before bidding the line. I sent them in a previous email, but if you would like to look at them again, please reach out. Sun/Mon line 5 and Thurs/Fri line 5 are the 5-4-9 lines.

Be aware of the time periods that will reduce down from 3 to 1 for bid leave slots. Amy sent out an email with these dates, so if that time is important to you, bid it the first round. Here they are again if you need them:

4/21-5/4

11/3-11/16

5/13-17

Since there are only 3 bid slots per day, there will be no reallocating leave, as there is nowhere to move it. 3 is the max we can have per day, so keep this in mind when selecting your leave. The exception to this are where there are 4 leave slots (7/4, 11/28, 12/25, 1/1). You can still request these holidays off when WebScheduler opens for requests for the year after we are done bidding. I will let you know when this will happen.

Go online to the BidATC website and make sure your information is correct and that you can sign in. https://bid.natca.org/zse

If you have any issues getting into BidATC, let me know as soon as possible. Make sure to read the notes on the lines, as well.

On another note, C-Cret Santa instructions and surveys are in the area, so please feel free to fill one out and put it in the “Completed Survey” envelope. The instructions are next to the envelope by the tree. Let me know if you have questions about this.

Thanks for all you do, and happy bidding!

Crumbley

360-635-8244