Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 2.5
Fatigue; Situational Awareness; Workload; Confusion
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic; General Flight Cancelled / Delayed
Airspace Structure; Human Factors; Staffing; Weather
I was working both finals positions combined to one. I encountered heavy arrival demand that was overwhelming since aircraft were unable to fly visual approaches which led me to have to run instrument approaches. When we run instrument approaches to the parallel runways we can run dependent staggered approaches with a 3 mile stagger; or independent simultaneous approaches with two final controllers. Due to our staffing shortage; there was no one available to staff a second final position to run independent approaches and my sector became overloaded.Due to a recent budget cut of overtime funds. To compensate for our lack of proper staffing we are forced to manage the operation at F11 with a reduced number of Controllers. The only method implemented by management to mitigate the risk of lower staffing levels is to reduce break times to prevent any Controller from exceeding 2 hours on position. This plan does not allow for positions to be staffed according to the traffic volume and often leads to many Controllers becoming fatigued by spending close to 2 hours on a busier than normal sector and having to take shortened breaks and then come back for another busy session with anywhere from 1.5- 2 hours on position again. While a 20 minute break is legal; it does not always allow for enough time to decompress from an intense session before going back to work yet another intense session.After my intense session on final; I had a 20 minute break and then went back and ended up on the most difficult position in the TRACON. I was lucky that about 20 minutes into my session; another Controller who was just beginning his shift; offered to work the sector and let me work a less intense sector. During discussions with management this week about plans to compensate for our reduced staffing daily; we are told right now we are just hoping for an increased budget and the only thing done to help is a reduced break policy which varies from 15-25 minutes based on the supervisor's discretion. We are told by management we shall not ask for a reduced arrival rate to help ease the burden since opening additional sectors to manage traffic volume is not always practical at this point. We are also told not to shut down our sector if we feel overloaded as this would bring attention to our facility.We are told to be reactive when we get overloaded; to then ask for in trail spacing to catch up.In my case of an overloaded final sector; typically with that volume of traffic running instrument approaches; the precedence has been to staff a second final to manage the frequency congestion; workload; and provide a better service to the user. In this case; each arrival to the same runway would only need 3 miles in trail instead of 6 miles to accomplish the 3 mile stagger. Many aircraft were vectored across the localizer to get extra spacing because the rate of traffic exceeded the capacity of the airspaces configuration. The Traffic Management (TMC) position was not staffed this morning and the Supervisor was having to manage that TMC position and perform Supervisor duties.If we cannot get the funding needed to staff the facility to provide the same level of service that we used to then we need to reduce the level of service to maintain the integrity of the National Airspace System (NAS). We cannot sustain the same traffic volume that we did when there were 4-5 more Controllers on scheduled overtime. This will happen again and again until staffing can be adjusted to match the traffic volume or the traffic volume is reduced to match the reduction in staffing.
A TRACON Controller reported being forced to work an overloaded finals sector to two runways for extended periods of time due to the TRACON not having the staffing to de-combine sectors.