Air Traffic Control Developmental
Workload; Communication Breakdown; Confusion; Training / Qualification
ATC Issue All Types; Airspace Violation All Types; Conflict Airborne Conflict; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic; Air Traffic Control Provided Assistance
Aircraft; Human Factors; Procedure; Weather
I was working the R-side at Nepta (R30). There was a large area of thunderstorms to the southwest of SZW VOR that all aircraft were deviating around. This was forcing multiple aircraft to deviate at various altitudes to the southwest out over the Gulf of Mexico. The TMU issued no flow restriction; MIT; or reroutes around the weather to reduce deviations and traffic volume complexity into my sector and surrounding sectors. The Brewton Sector traffic volume reached 'red' levels in the Sector Monitor Alert system. The Controller working Brewton stopped accepting hand-offs from the Central Area sectors due to the volume of traffic all deviating through the same area of airspace. The Central Area sectors had no where to hold the aircraft; so they began off loading the aircraft into my sector on vectors. In addition to the aircraft I had in the southern portion of my airspace on the Q Routes; I became inundated with aircraft from the Brewton Sector and Central Area sectors that were deviating to the south of the Florida panhandle coastline around the storm. The DSR display was so cluttered with data blocks in that area; that it was not possible for myself; my D-Side Controller or my Tracking Controller to keep data block information safely separated or verify if we were providing required separation from neighboring airspace. Because of the overlapping data blocks; I could not tell if some aircraft had been handed off before entering other sectors' and facilities airspace; as well as tell if I had accepted hand offs on the flights before they entered my airspace. This is a reoccurring problem with the ZJX TMU. Their actions are always reactionary to problems already occurring instead of being proactive and creating plans to mitigate high volumes of air traffic that will deviate all within the same small area of confined airspace. TMU consistently does very little to help controllers in situations like this that occur on a weekly if not daily basis during thunderstorm season.I would recommend that all the TMU personnel be retrained on flow control procedures and tools available in order to assist controllers during these scenarios. Their job duties include being responsible to monitor and control the flow of air traffic volume through ZJX airspace; however; they do very little to control the flow of traffic into sectors that are impacted due to weather deviations. No ground delays or mile in trail restrictions were issued to our underlying terminal facilities or neighboring ARTCC's to help ease the volume and complexity of air traffic through my sector and the other impacted sectors around me.
ZJX Developmental describes situation where weather is causing deviations and an adjacent sector stops accepting aircraft. These aircraft now come to his sector which causes the Controller to become overwhelmed.