Agency Works Year-Round To Make Event Safe

by ANN Correspondent Dave Slosson

Do you think that only the pilots and EAA personnel plan for next year’s AirVenture way in advance? Well, think again. The FAA keeps the safety of the operation front and center during AirVenture and starts considering changes for 2009 immediately after this year’s event ends.

Every day of AirVenture, at 6 am, EAA flight line operations crews and the FAA controller crews have a pre-shift briefing at the control tower. They discuss the anticipated weather trends, focusing heavily on the winds, choose what traffic flow to run, discuss taxi routes, and any airport issues that need to be considered such as scheduled mass arrivals. The evening crews repeat this process at 1 pm.

At 2 pm, the morning crews reassemble to discuss problems encountered such as bottlenecks in traffic flow or areas that caused confusion and offer suggestions to alleviate the problems. These suggestions are then relayed to the evening crews to fix the problems on the fly. The evening crews will also meet after the field closes and repeat the debriefing process. Any problems and solutions mentioned in these briefings are discussed in the next year’s planning sessions.

The day after AirVenture is over, members of the FAA management team and the EAA flight line operations staff meet to discuss what went right, what went wrong, and discuss lessons learned to help focus on any problems or issues to address for next year. Was a runway change too slow or not communicated in a timely manner? Was traffic flow properly restricted during an airport emergency? Was Fisk properly controlled for smooth operations at the airport?

One month later, in September, the same groups meet separately then corporately to brainstorm any procedural or operational changes that should be made to correct the problems and issues. Additional input that is weighed in these discussions includes items mentioned in post-event controller critiques, pilot feedback from the online surveys, and EAA feedback from any other sources.

Last year, roughly 800 pilots filled out the online surveys after the event. This input helps see the pilot side of the operation. The groups continue to discuss potential changes via monthly telephone conferences until consensus is reached.

Procedural changes need to be finalized by early February so the NOTAM can be in the publisher’s hands in early April. The NOTAM goes online and is published for printing simultaneously. Any operational changes need to be finalized by late April to make the deadline for training packages for controllers, which are sent out in May.

What changes have we seen over the recent years that these groups have recommended? The colored dots on the runways, roughly every 1500’, helps both pilots and controllers communicate plainly and simply where to land for proper separation from those around them. Color flows were in use but a year or two before being abandoned as too tough to remember what color corresponded to what flow pattern.

The desire to give pilots advance information on the status of Oshkosh airport yielded a toll-free phone number connected to the arrival ATIS. Adding a taller antenna at Fisk this year will also help the VFR arrivals know well before Ripon whether they need to hold or not. The left downwind operation for Runway 18R was added for more options in running the arrival flow with southerly winds. Using a separate frequency and a couple controllers to operate Runway 18L was added to reduce departure delays post-airshow. The cards in the aircraft windows help communicate where the pilots wish to go without the ground directors having to approach an operating aircraft.

Planning ahead for your arrival at the world’s best airshow? You’re not alone, as the FAA air traffic team has been planning since last year’s show ended, and really even during the previous show. They’re ready for you; are you ready for Oshkosh AirVenture? Have you thoroughly digested this year’s NOTAM? Your safety and that of those around you depend on you following the proper procedures to the letter. Be safe, have fun, and we’ll see you at the show!

Our thanks to Susan Parson, Flight Standards Division, and Wanda Adelman, Milwaukee tower manager and Oshkosh tower manager during AirVenture, for contributing to this article.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.airventure.org