Medium Large Transport
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 3.4
Communication Breakdown; Workload; Time Pressure; Confusion; Distraction; Human-Machine Interface; Situational Awareness
ATC Issue All Types; Airspace Violation All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic
Human Factors; Procedure
ZOB Cleveland Center routinely takes handoffs late. By late I mean with less than 2 minutes flying time to their boundary. ZOB also routinely doesn't answer landline calls in a timely fashion; for; e.g.; handoffs. So one is repeatedly in the frustrating position of having to 'sweat' handoffs to Cleveland Center. Today; Litchfield sector (C14) didn't take the handoff on Aircraft X; FL210; MIZAR3 arrival to DTW until 1 min flying time to their boundary. This is unacceptable.Low and high altitude sectors have minimum nautical mile distances outside of their airspace that they have to look (I believe 25NM for high alt and 15NM for low alt sectors). I don't believe many ZOB sectors abutting ZAU airspace look the proper distance out; or even if they do they still don't take handoffs in a timely fashion a good percentage of the time (in my case I'd estimate 15% of handoffs are not accepted in a timely fashion). I'd recommend ZOB controllers get remedial training on handoffs. The irony that ZOB flashes aircraft at ZAU 10+ minutes from our boundary and we as a culture mostly take their handoffs 2-5 minutes flying time from our boundary seems to be lost on ZOB controllers who routinely wait until the last second. This is extremely annoying on the mid shift as well because you don't want to sweat the one plane in your sector being accepted by ZOB.
ZAU Controller reported that ZOB is routinely late on taking handoffs and that they do not answer landlines in a timely manner.