Pizza for Beach Day: I spoke with Ricky about this and he said that I could order pizza whenever and save the receipts for reimbursement. I will do that when I get back and it will likely be on a Friday to catch the crews that participated.

NWA vs. C208: I have been informed that the performance of the supervisor working final has been documented, finally, (pun intended) on the QAR that was generated by the TCAS RA and logged by the tower. I have also heard rumors to the effect that we haven’t seen the end of this one. Ironically but not too surprisingly another incident on final occurred last week with a C550 being run down and passed by a heavy. It seems that there is some sort of difference of opinion or confusion as to what overtake means. According to the American Heritage Dictionary overtake means:

o·ver·take Audio pronunciation of "overtake" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (vr-tk) tr.v. o·ver·took, (-tk) o·ver·tak·en, (-tkn) o·ver·tak·ing, o·ver·takes
1. To catch up with; draw even or level with.
2. To pass after catching up with.
3. To come upon unexpectedly; take by surprise: geopolitical strategists who were overtaken by events in southeast Asia.
Without an entry in the Pilot/Controller Glossary, meanings of words are what reasonable persons would consider them to mean. I think the dictionary is a good start on that reasonability thing. But to quote a famous political gaffe I guess it would matter as to what the meaning of “is” is. I don’t think we have heard the end of that one either as I have heard rumor that our Ops managers disagree with the manager as to the disposition of that one (non-occurrence) as well.

Excused Absences Grievance: It was as I suspected. More bad news. Our grievance, denied. Thus our grievance, elevated.

Traffic Count Issues: IG has been helping gather data regarding our traffic data entries. The plan is to get each hour of each day of the past 16 months onto hard copy and then audit and correct TTAP. Somewhere we have a pretty good-sized glitch as the facility database is corrupted and incorrect and I don’t know how that works into the bigger scheme of things in regards to our TTAP entries or our CI. I will likely begin the audit after I return, working the data a month at a time to find and correct errors in the MSDT database. I will also examine our profile but it sounds like our facility profile is not the problem. In the meanwhile let’s work on not having any more zero hours.

Fridge Ice Maker: At some point the refrigerator ice maker was hooked up and we now have fresh ice available without filling trays. Huzzah!!!

TZ Failure to Report Issue: Still percolating. Last week tower controllers were interviewed by CT and SH about the events of the day. Bev was the representative for NATCA. Inconceivably the agency let the voice recording for the tower cycle through and there was no tower data to review. Apparently the agency is investigating the issue after lo these many months. More as I hear it.

CRUX/Art Training: Voluntary CBIs are available for the ART platform. I took both CBIs and the basic instruction was just that, basic, but the Supervisory Function CBI had my head swimming by the end. The Supervisory CBI kept referencing things not covered in the CBI so I think some hands on is in order because it covers things all CICs will be expected to handle at one point or another.

Seniority: The OPF requests will be turned in to management tomorrow. AC: Please sign the request in your box and turn it in to Laura. As soon as we get the files, I will start creating the list. I have three done already and fun was had by all.

More in a few weeks. Be safe.

Cathy Alcorn
(h) 279-0124
ANC Local President
NATCA ANC ATCT
P.O. Box 190541
Anchorage, AK 99519