I think you are dead on when you point out if the system is good enough for ZSE, ZLC why not the entire country? Just turn it on and do away with Host if the FAA has such confidence in it. Or if not, go to Congress and tell them we screwed up, trash ERAM, re-host Host and start on a real replacement system with the controllers there at the very beginning. That would take about seven years. No contractors, just controllers and technical FAA personnel who understand air traffic control software/hardware and have the controllers tell us what the next system should look like. Yea I know, I can hear the laughing from Washington now. What a radical idea having the end users of the system there at the very beginning of its design.

ERAM was never seriously tested anywhere even though the tools where there to convert current scenario into ERAM scenario. Instead it’s been tested on the flying public a point you make perfectly and indisputably. The Host contract ends in 2013 and the FAA has to make a decision as to whether to extent Host for hundreds of millions of dollars or simply turn ERAM on nation wide. The next couple of months will be interesting with ZMP being the next victim.

As more sites come online with ERAM 24×7 will there be an increased risk of a serious incident? On the automation side just reading the AIMS tickets opened and unresolved on track jumps and problems with the tracker will the controllers be able to mitigate all these issues?

Again, a brilliant piece of writing!

Too often it’s been my experience that by the time controllers in the field see new technology, it’s too far developed to make significant changes to it. And it usually falls far short of what it could have been.

I’m well aware that those involved in the development of the new technology work hard to create good products that they think will help controllers do their jobs better. But as you noted, they’re often not given access to the end users of those systems (including both controllers and technicians).

In the end controllers get technology that doesn’t suit their needs, frustrating both them and those who believed they had been developing useful tools for them.

I would love to be involved in helping develop new technology, but in the course of my career those opportunities rarely if ever have arisen.

URET, ERIDS and ERAM all have significant shortcomings that I’m forced to work around.

It would be ideal if controllers from every facility got a chance to be involved early in the development of new technology. That’s because different facilities use the equipment in different ways. What works well at one facility might not work well at another.

For example, URET (our computerized flight data system) doesn’t work with non-radar, and there are plenty of facilities (including mine) that have to separate non-radar traffic. URET is useless for that. I can only assume that the first facilities to use URET didn’t experience those shortcomings because they didn’t need to use it in a non-radar environment.

Years ago MITRE was involved in researching ways to modify URET to work in a non-radar environment. They visited my facility and met with controllers to that end. I don’t know what happened to that project.

I suspect that the FAA (mistakenly) believed that new technology would eliminate non-radar completely and thereby didn’t feel the need to modify URET. Now ERAM includes URET (renamed EDST), with the same shortcomings.

ERIDS (En Route Information Display System) is a computerized information system that could have been a fantastic tool for en route controllers. Instead it too has significant shortcomings including a poor interface and a display that has resolution that is inadequate for the job.

To top things off, last fall we got new ERIDS touchscreen displays that frequently go out of calibration making them unusable. It’s assumed that the new displays weren’t tested adequately before deployment into the field.

A large part of the problem would be solved if the FAA were willing to commit the finances to develop those systems properly. Involving many end users of the systems (including those at different facilities) early in development would go far in producing much better systems. But that would come at a significant cost, something the FAA has largely proved unwilling to invest.

I don’t know why NATCA would object to controllers being involved in that process, but unfortunately it’s clear that there are plenty of politics involved…

Originally I thought it was GPS navigation but wait, don’t I remember ADS-B at ZHU going live? “gasp” on a Host machine (screams) and Washington folks were there falling over each other tying to take credit for it.

Oh, another one I forgot, ERAM “will” reduce controller work load through the use of automated tools. Hmm well that sounds good, but the last I checked with friends at ZLC and ZSE, what? 4 and 5 controllers required to work one position because of work arounds? Do tell.

ERAM isn’t going to be ready for ICAO 2012? But the hard to maintain, conceive of, and only 5 people left alive (poor dears) who understand the Host system will be ready for ICAO 2012, hmm. What hundreds of Lock-heads couldn’t do a few humble aging senior citizens FAA’ers and long term contractors are managing to do ICAO on the obsolete, hard to understand, poorly documented Host system. I was so glad to get out of DC and back home to ZXX, the DC folks are, well let’s just say people from DC.

Oh I almost forgot one bit of scuttlebutt I picked up from my Washington tripping was ERAM, yea, step one to EnRoute privatization. Lockheed owns the code, “so what a controller says”, automation persons all types of alarms go off in their heads. ERAM has to do a Tech Refresh soon but guess what? the FAA hasn’t any money. Lockheed steps up and say “We’ll save the day, we’ll purchase the hardware” check-mark number 2.

One final note an old boss of mine told me when I was but a kid. Kid he told me “The FAA doesn’t want to be in the air traffic control business, they want to be in the business of monitoring the air traffic control system” It took me years to understand the difference between the two. Just a note of caution to my many friends who work the boards day in and day out and who hands down the finest in the world. Make ERAM work to Spec, they are coming for probably not your job but the job of the person that you are training now.

Seattle had a cascading failure of all ERAM positions due to a
“perfect storm” of inputs. Of course, the “perfect storm” of inputs
they refer to happens once a week here at ZFW with refueling aircraft.
We are NOT reassured.

The field continues to open problem records (INFO’s) against the Host system, why I don’t know, they don’t have anyone to look at them let alone fix them.

It’s just difficult to understand how the FAA allowed itself to get into the position of where ERAM may, have the same functionality and reliability as Host but in ten to twenty year from now. GPS you say, really? take at look at ZHU who is using ADS-B today, like right now. They adapted some virtual radars for the ADS-B and like magic radar tracks over the gulf. Imagine that!

Peace, George

It doesn’t come as any surprise that Lockheed Martin didn’t come up with the Shadow Mode function themselves; thus far they’ve had a hard time so far providing the real functionality in ERAM that controllers need (including an easy transition mode back and forth from HOST to ERAM).

We haven’t heard much about ZLC’s latest tests, although I did hear that during a test a few weeks ago when an adjacent center was running ERAM that the ERAM computer flooded our HOST with thousands of duplicate flight plans again (the very problem the HOST was patched for a month or so ago).

Therefore, there’s at least one other bug they’ve now experienced in ERAM that will cause it to send and resend a flight plan over and over again to an adjacent HOST computer.

Wonder how many times they’re going to try and patch the HOST system to protect it from an adjacent ERAM system…