Some bad controllers

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote in message
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Chip Jones wrote:
"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote in message
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[snipped]

Paper strips are only as reliable as the computer and printer that print
them ...
which are automated systems already.

Not true. Paper strips are designed to be *written on* by human beings.
They reflect control data written in pencil or pen using control symbology
as a form of communication. That control data is not the product of an
automated system. Rather it is the product of the human air traffic
controller. A good controller can write and talk at the same time far
faster and with far more accuracy than he/she can input data into a computer
via an interface like a key board. I can literally write as fast and
accurately as I can think and talk. After years of practice inputting data,
I am still far more prone to error using a keyboard to attempt to do the
same thing. Furthermore, strips serve air safety in other vital ways, such
as serving as memory aids (Did I switch him? Is he still on a vector? Did
I pass that speed? Did he request a reroute? Is he pointed out to the
adjacent facility? Is WAFDOF approved down the line? Am I even talking to
this airplane?), conflict probes (Do I have any other guys at FL330?) etc.
In my facility, back when we actually had staffing, two or three proficient
controllers could work a balls-to-the-wall enroute sector full of high
complexity and volume without ever uttering a single word to one another,
using strips and detailed stripmarking as the sole form of safe and
effective team coordination. It worked because each controller would work
and write on the strip, cock the strip out of the bay on piority items etc.

Add to that the fact that strips serve as fail safes in enroute automated
environments because *they never break*. Strips can be written, used and
processed by *hand*. You don't even need a computer, and you don't even
need a printer... I'd argue that strips are *more* reliable than the
computer and printers that print them.


[snipped]

Technology for technology's sake isn't always progress IMO. Especially
not
in the air safety business.

Never suggested technology for technology's sake. Do you consider all
of the automation that has already happened in avionics and ATC to be
technology for technology's sake?

Of course I don't. I can't speak for avionics, but I can tell you that in
the enroute ATC world, technology for technology's sake sometimes seems to
be the case. For example, we have an automated POS called URET (Stands for
User Requested Evaluation Tool). In this case the "User" who made the
request wasn't the enroute air traffic controller, but rather the airline
industry looking for more direct routings and believing that a good conflict
probe would facilitate their desire. URET was sold to FAA as a conflict
probe/electronic strip replacement tool. The probe doesn't work. It's
crap. Human ATC's don't need a conflict probe anyway-they have eyes, radar
and paper strips. The automated flight plan processor is a **** poor
substitute for the strips it is unsuccessfully trying to replace. It is
completely unsuited to non-radar operations. It requires heads-down time
for data input. URET equipped facilities commit operational deviations
*daily* using automation to replace simple strip functions such as mandatory
coordination with the next sector. They do this because the automation that
they have been forced to use is inferior to the paper strip it has
replaced., and they forget things because they aren't processing strips.
They don't get dinged because controllers don't turn each other in for
deviations unless it is in self-defense. You don't throw rocks in a glass
house in ATC-World. By the way, paper strips are still mandated to be
printed in URET facilities "just in case" the automation goes belly up. So
far, it has gone belly up in ZID, ZJX and ZKC that I know of. Strips just
keep swimming....


Chip, ZTL