Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 1
Situational Awareness; Distraction; Communication Breakdown; Confusion
ATC Issue All Types; Conflict Airborne Conflict; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Human Factors; Procedure; Staffing
Here at IND we have straight in fixes to every runway; which at times of peak traffic makes running the feed to final very difficult and can cause the final to be strung out father than needed. These 2 aircraft were straight in to 23's talking to the FRB feeder position (combined with FRD). The controller flashed the aircraft as soon as he started their descent and; as is custom; I took radar as soon and I saw them flashing.  Apparently he descended Aircraft Y to 7;000 Feet on the LOC for 23L and Aircraft X to 8;000 Feet on the LOC for 23R at the same time with no paper stop. Aircraft Y dogged the descent reaching 8;000 Feet; but he had switched Aircraft X to me already. The FLM told FRB to stop Aircraft X at 9;000 Feet and upon learning of the frequency change instructed me to do the same; but he was on neither frequency.  When Aircraft Y checked on I issued traffic and got the pilot to maintain visual separation; but separation was already well below minima. Aircraft X finally checked in and and was too high for the approach and had to be resequenced into the downwind. My manager told me to issue the Brasher warning due to his lengthy time off frequency. Neither controller was offered a break after the separation loss due to low staffing and high traffic.Final Four weekend in INDY brings a lot of extra traffic; over 200 extra GA's just to the big airport. We should have started off with enough staffing to split the feeds (which was done an hour later) instead of having to call in overtime and wait for them to show up. My feeder should have at least been offered a break; instead he was there for another hour and was totally gun shy with the straight in props and tried to get 'creative' causing me to work even harder since people were nose to nose on my downwind to avoid the straight in arrival. Being more proactive with calling ZID to set up miles in trail and perhaps a slower speed over the straight in fix before they got within the last sector would also have alleviated the complexity.
I'm really not sure what happened. We were on approach frequency and we were suddenly asked to copy a phone number down for possible pilot deviation. We had no idea why there was any need to do so. I copied the phone number and gave it to my captain who was the pilot flying. Once we had landed and secured the airplane he called the phone number provided. According to the approach controllers we took three minutes to check in after the handoff with center; and because of this delay they could not provide separation from other aircraft in the area.  I don't remember taking as long as 3 minutes to check in.  It took me as long as it took for the frequency to provide an opportunity for me to do so.  I do remember there was a lot of other chatter on the frequency and having to wait for an opportunity to check in; but certainly nothing out of the ordinary. Meanwhile; approach control seemed to have forgotten about us because they left us very high on the decent to land on 23.  So high did they leave us that when I queried the delay in bringing us down further they stated that they forgot about us and would require turning us back around to loose altitude. Mixed with all this approach brought us down to about 6;000 feet and at about 7;000 asked us to stop the decent at 7;000.  We got an RA at this point due to another aircraft in the vicinity and it commanded us to climb about 300 feet to comply with the commands given by the flight director.Unfortunately I really don't know what we may have done wrong.  We kept a vigilant ear to the frequency and complied promptly with instructions as they were issued.
IND Controller and pilots of violating aircraft report of confusion while flying into IND. Controller states pilots were late in checking in which lead to a separation loss also caused by the previous controller not coordinating correctly. Pilots do not know they were late in communicating and thought the problem was with another aircraft they had an RA on.