Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 28.0
Workload; Situational Awareness; Human-Machine Interface
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Air Traffic Control Issued Advisory / Alert; Air Traffic Control Issued New Clearance; General Flight Cancelled / Delayed; General Release Refused / Aircraft Not Accepted
Company Policy; Human Factors; Procedure; Airspace Structure; Weather
ZFW Traffic Management Unit (TMU) started talking about the weather event that was forecast to happen that evening. Confidence was high. We first broached the subject of structured routings around the weather during a telcon. The New York metro aircraft were put on weather re-routes to the south end of the weather in ZKC and Command Center wanted to put the DC metro on a different weather re-route. ZFW saw what the weather was going to do and finally got Command Center to put DC metro traffic on a ABI weather re-route knowing the FAM weather re-route was going to quickly fall apart.Our plan was to have the PNH weather route available for the traffic on the FAM route so we could transition them down to the GTH route when we lost the PNH route. Apparently Command Center's plan was to just launch everything east of ZMP and let them deviate south into ZFW with no routes and launch everything west of ZMP going east to deviate south into ZFW with no routes. As this was all falling apart ZFW TMU requested Command Center publish weather re-routes to catch these aircraft and put them on structured routes. Command Center got their way and no further routes were published.Aircraft east to west and west to east all deviated south into ZFW causing our northern tier to go red with heavy traffic volume. We opened our Ultra High sectors to accommodate the added traffic but as the shift had to go home and sectors had to be combined volume got to the unmanageable stage. At one point I called Command Center to have them miss ZFW entirely with 6 aircraft of which they only moved 3. If a controller had done that they would have 3 airspace deviations on their record. Our first tier Centers worked with us as best they could having their own problems; but we received little to no help from Command Center.When weather is expected to extend from OKC all the way to Canada; Command Center needs to recognize the fact that there are more departure airports than JFK/LGA/EWR/BOS/DCA IAD/BWI/PHL that actually have traffic that will be impacted and figure them into the plan. Just because they may not have as high of a volume individually combined they turned out to be a lot of volume for ZKC and ZFW to deal with on deviations.When weather is impacting traffic from the east coast going west does it not stand to reason that traffic from the west coast going east will also be impacted? Quite often this seems to not be considered in the planning by Command Center. We were able to pin down the freight haulers to MEM and SDF but every other destination fell thru the cracks and wound up in ZFW deviating.When there are East to West and West to East weather re-routes coming thru ZFW; Command Center never factors in traffic from ZJX and ZMA going to the same destinations. Their reply to ZFW is always that there is not enough traffic to publish a re-route for them. Last night those aircraft should never have entered ZFW airspace.
I assumed ADM-H radar position. Weather was building northeast to southwest (approximately IRW to Canada). Traffic volume had become increasingly high but still manageable. Eventually traffic volume and difficulty had become extremely high and extremely difficult. For the next 2 hours traffic at ADM-H had become very unsafe. Data block overlap created a situation of not being able to discern aircraft call signs; altitudes; computer identification's; or sector that had control of said data blocks. There were so many aircraft in the northern part of the sector that one could not move data blocks out of the way of others. This was not the only sector in this situation. Sectors in my respective area at ZFW; as well as XKC and ZME were experiencing the same problems. My map (monitor alert parameter) number at ADM-H is 18; for approximately 90 minutes my map number was between 25 to 33.In years of controlling traffic; this was the most chaotic and unsafe situation that I have ever been required to work. Local supervision was not a factor.I would like to see a full investigation into why the flying public's lives were put into this most unsafe position. Persons that made decisions that created this unsafe situation; and yes; safety was comprised; must be held accountable and removed from their duties! Local supervision was not a factor. Decisions made outside ZFW was the contributing factor to this inexcusable situation.
Two Center Traffic Management Specialists and a Controller report the Command Center ignored requests for weather reroutes; causing numerous Center sectors to be dangerously overloaded with traffic deviating for weather.