Commercial Fixed Wing
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 6
Communication Breakdown; Distraction; Situational Awareness; Workload
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Staffing; ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings; Human Factors
This does not involve one specific aircraft. This was an entire unsafe situation. I was working R15 with 19 aircraft in my sector. Alert numbers put the sector to red at 18. I would have liked to have had a D side; but I didn't ask for one because we didn't have anybody on break. Every sector was split off and we only had 1 D side in the control room. The D was helping a different red sector that needed more help than me. We did have training going on sector 16; but I felt that I could handle the traffic load; so I let them continue to train without asking to break up the training. We are 2 under numbers today and management doesn't feel the need to staff up to numbers anymore. They count trainees as numbers; they count people that come in at 10am as day shift and swing shift numbers. The fact of the matter is that we are grossly understaffed and it is getting dangerous. In this situation I normally would have asked for a D side; but I didn't because we didn't have anybody that was re-callable.During the middle of this session my main and standby radios at Billings suddenly went out (those are the main radios for the sector). If this had happened half an hour later when I was red it would have got very ugly. It was bad enough as it was to have them go out; but we were lucky on the timing.This is in no way an uncommon occurrence; but many people won't take the time to send a report about it. It happens almost daily. On this session I worked for 1+45 and I know that many other controllers have been doing the same today and almost every other day. Management refuses to acknowledge the problem of staffing.We need more staffing at Salt Lake Center; and immediately we need to staff up to numbers with overtime until we have enough on the basic watch schedule to fill all of our holes. We have been lucky that we've been able to scrape by with what seems like a slightly less than average summer. There will be plenty of times when we will need additional people but are unable to get any help. We just split a sector; which was opposed by at least 95% of controllers in the area; so now we have an extra sector and even fewer people to work it than last year.This is ridiculous and could prove to be catastrophic in the future.
ZLC Center Controller reported an unsafe situation when the sector was understaffed by two people and the radios went out.