Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
ATC Issue All Types; Airspace Violation All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Staffing; Human Factors; Procedure
It's been a very busy month of RIMPAC activities. There have been many unsafe situations and close call stories lately. They built an ATCAA corridor for fighter aircraft just west and east of Honolulu airspace; called KAELA EAST or KAELA WEST. It showed up on my SIA board as WEST KAELA FL250B290 MISC Times. I asked the Supervisor if it was hot or not. The TMC jumped in and said that it is cold; that if it was hot; it would show the times. I told the Supervisor that it would be much easier and for over flight planning to tell us the times and write HOT or COLD so we know. As I am recommending this; the TMC told the Supervisor that it was actually hot at this time. I don't know when it got activated and do not know how many airplanes actually went through it. We have many over flights; and CONUS to LIH flights that fly through there at those altitudes. TMC and supervisors need to do their job. Many incidents like that occurred due to the fact that they are not doing their jobs like they expect me to.
It has been the busiest and worst RIMPAC in all my years at this facility; too much to explain. This will just cover staffing we were promised by management that they would staff us appropriately for RIMPAC. I guess what is appropriate for us is not the same for them. On the average; they staff us with 11-12 FPLs during the en route side day watch. We have 11 positions that needed to be staffed. So how do they do this do you ask? The rob Peter to pay Paul constantly if they are a good supervisor. If they are not; the positions will not be staffed and unsafe situations occur. Most supervisors do not know; or are too lazy; to monitor positions so we have to yell for help. I did so on this day. I was working on R3; when I had 2 VFR flight (one requesting a practice VOR approach into MKK); 3 oceanic departures; a Piper requesting a Visual Approach into LUP; a DH8 requesting release less than 3 minutes from sector 4's boundary climbing into my LUP arrivals face; OGG Tower calling for a clearance for an Oceanic departure; NGF trying to get a hold of me to coordinate something; all ASP possible is HOT or some that I wasn't even told about. To put it briefly; I was busy and did not have a D-Side because there was sick leave and the supervisor would not call in an 8 hour body. So; know we were short again; they did not staff appropriately until I felt safety was about to be compromised and yell for help. The supervisor later denied that we were short but yet could not explain why I needed to call for help and pull someone off another position and plug him on my D-Side. Yes; we are extremely poorly managed and staffed! Many incidents have occurred. People are still hesitant to write reports; probably because we are too short to get time to write them. Out of frustration; I insisted on writing this.
HCF Controller described an unsafe condition when extremely busy military operations resulted in heavy/complex traffic with supervisors failing to respond as appropriate.  Reporter suggested management is not doing their job.