Milk Run Monday - Sydney Director Trial

[David Z - 1027224]

Following staff discussions last year and public discussions at the town hall meeting early this year, I am pleased to announce the trial of Sydney Director during Milk Run Monday.

 

Sydney Director will operate as an additional TMA position and we have chosen not to apply any particular restrictions on its use, except that you can only use it during the approved periods. However, we would like to see people remember that Melbourne Approach sees just as much traffic as Sydney!

 

The extended coverage rules we have set for this trial allow the use of Director even if Approach is online, however, as you will see in the attached documentation, if you log on as Director without Approach, you are effectively running the whole TMA (like Approach) - however, when Approach logs on, your airspace will reduce to just Director airspace - so this is a choice you have to make before you log on. In other words, your choice of Approach or Director will decide your "primary" position.

 

Prior to logging in on Monday on any Sydney area position (including Tower, etc!) please have a look at the attached documentation and review the Sydney Area Local Instructions - in particular, pay attention to how the airspace changes depending on the runway configuration.

 

You can bring up a TMA airspace diagram by going to the list of STARs and selecting one of the "(SY) SYDIR xxx" items. Note that this is only available in the TMA sector files.

 

I will be observing the proceedings and be available on Teamspeak during the trial to get your thoughts about it. Each week I will also set up a discussion thread so that everyone can provide their feedback and comments, as well as any ideas for improvement.

 

With a successful trial, we hope to have Sydney Director used more often, and perhaps have more TMA positions at other locations too. This trial will hopefully set up a bit of a transformation that reflects our growth over the years, so we are hoping everyone will get on board to support this, whether by getting all of the ATC positions staffed up, providing feedback or even just flying between Melbourne and Sydney!

 

I hope to see you all there!

 

Sydney Director Trial documentation

 

David Zhong

Director Operations