A320
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Non Radar 12; Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (mon) 11; Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 11
Time Pressure; Workload; Situational Awareness; Distraction; Communication Breakdown; Troubleshooting
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings; Weather
I was working the In-flight position at the DCA AFSS hub monitoring the Miami AOR [Area of Responsibility] frequencies. There was a system outage which prevented me from having a graphical display to provide time-critical meteorological and aeronautical information to the crew of Aircraft X; during which time a multi-cell thunderstorm cluster that contained low level wind shear and severe turbulence was passing over the aircraft's destination (MIA). I alerted my supervisor and no corrective action was taken to compensate the system outage. We do not have a backup system which provides graphical information that allows us to overlay critical weather data in correlation to an aircraft's flight path. We do have AISR (Aeronautical Information System Replacement) as a system back up for flight plan data and weather information processing; however; we do not have a backup system with an accurate graphical display of the aircraft's flight path and severe weather. In addition to this my judgment became altered because we are understaffed at our facility and was under and immense amount of stress because I needed a break which was denied. Specialists are worked to the point of physical and mental exhaustion and are often denied breaks during times of increased traffic volumes which causes facility management to become agitated and angry to which they respond to the operational workforce with threats and intimidation which contributes as a significant safety mitigation factor by creating a hostile work environment. Many specialists are forced and compelled to brief pilots in AORs that they are not trained or certified to do so in by a threatening and hostile management staff. Our facility is operated under Company X and the non-adequate staffing coupled with malfunctioning equipment makes an extremely stressful and hostile work environment which is exacerbated by a vengeful and vindictive managerial team.
Reporter clarified acronyms and also described working condition as poor.
DCA FSS Specialist reported a system outage affecting flight safety and described their working environment as stressful due to staffing issues.