Altitude deviation accusation

truman bidwell said:
30 years and 18K violation free hours. Want to stay that way. I'm far from making mistakes though. Make em all the time!
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Keep in mind that because of the electronic snitches now installed on (all?) ATC setups, what in the past might have just been a "mistake" and corrected by an apology and a heading vector now is an automatic "potential" deviation report that the working controller has absolutely no say in. Lots of things that never would have triggered a violation in the past new do.
 
BobDDuck said:
Keep in mind that because of the electronic snitches now installed on (all?) ATC setups, what in the past might have just been a "mistake" and corrected by an apology and a heading vector now is an automatic "potential" deviation report that the working controller has absolutely no say in. Lots of things that never would have triggered a violation in the past new do.
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I've heard people talk about the snitch before, but never what triggers it. I mean, besides the obvious like a loss of separation, what are the "other things" you refer to? Just out of curiosity...
 
Corny357 said:
I've heard people talk about the snitch before, but never what triggers it. I mean, besides the obvious like a loss of separation, what are the "other things" you refer to? Just out of curiosity...
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No idea. I'm sure one of the ATC guys has a list though.
 
FM_Weasel said:
The AIM has some wisdom on recording phone lines at ATC facilities:

4−1−4. Recording and Monitoring

a. Calls to air traffic control (ATC) facilities
(ARTCCs, Towers, FSSs, Central Flow, and
Operations Centers) over radio and ATC operational
telephone lines (lines used for operational purposes
such as controller instructions, briefings, opening and
closing flight plans, issuance of IFR clearances and
amendments, counter hijacking activities, etc.) may
be monitored and recorded for operational uses such
as accident investigations, accident prevention,
search and rescue purposes, specialist training and
evaluation, and technical evaluation and repair of
control and communications systems.

b. Where the public access telephone is recorded,
a beeper tone is not required. In place of the “beep”
tone the FCC has substituted a mandatory requirement
that persons to be recorded be given notice they
are to be recorded and give consent. Notice is given
by this entry, consent to record is assumed by the
individual placing a call to the operational facility.
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Maybe my facility is an oddball, but we don't have recorded telephone lines. Sure, the frequencies and anything that goes through the ETVS gets recorded, but none of the separate standalone phone are.
 
Stinger said:
Maybe my facility is an oddball, but we don't have recorded telephone lines. Sure, the frequencies and anything that goes through the ETVS gets recorded, but none of the separate standalone phone are.
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They just told us in a weekly briefing all the phones are now recorded... As far as they made it sound its a national policy. By all phones they meant all supe and mgmt phones not like the random one in the cafeteria or something.
 
Corny357 said:
I've heard people talk about the snitch before, but never what triggers it. I mean, besides the obvious like a loss of separation, what are the "other things" you refer to? Just out of curiosity...
Click to expand...
BobDDuck said:
No idea. I'm sure one of the ATC guys has a list though.
Click to expand...
They were doing random audits before which was nabbing about 40 pilots a month at Endeavor (2100 pilots at the time). ASAP always covered you.

The excuse I've heard is, FAA won't grant the money for next gen (they vote it and then pull it away) so they want to show how bad the system is to get congress to approve it.
 
BobDDuck said:
Wouldn't the controller simply asking what altitude you currently were at solve the problem? I've heard that plenty of times before.
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Often we are (correctly) trained to issue instructions first and ask questions later. Remember our RADAR lags reality by 5-12 seconds, so if we observe an aircraft update 300 feet above assigned altitude, we have to assume it is climbing. Most controllers would issue a descent back to 5,000 if there is an upcoming conflict, or a traffic alert if there is an immediate conflict. We have watched many videos of controllers making an error into a NMAC by asking questions instead of separating the airplanes.
 
Bernoulli Fan said:
Often we are (correctly) trained to issue instructions first and ask questions later. Remember our RADAR lags reality by 5-12 seconds, so if we observe an aircraft update 300 feet above assigned altitude, we have to assume it is climbing. Most controllers would issue a descent back to 5,000 if there is an upcoming conflict, or a traffic alert if there is an immediate conflict. We have watched many videos of controllers making an error into a NMAC by asking questions instead of separating the airplanes.
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I get that. I meant after they issued whatever separation vectors or altitude clearances they need to give.
 
cmac88 said:
They just told us in a weekly briefing all the phones are now recorded... As far as they made it sound its a national policy. By all phones they meant all supe and mgmt phones not like the random one in the cafeteria or something.
Click to expand...

I work in an FAA facility, our tracon and tower telephone lines are not recorded. We were going to turn one of our tower lines into a recorded line a few years ago, but there was some sort of roadblock we ran into and it never got accomplished.
 
Stinger said:
I work in an FAA facility, our tracon and tower telephone lines are not recorded. We were going to turn one of our tower lines into a recorded line a few years ago, but there was some sort of roadblock we ran into and it never got accomplished.
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Yes I'm a center guy, this is what we were told last week. It could just be a local change but the way they made it sound seemed like it was coming from above. Take that for what its worth.... not much.
 
All enroute only info: The snitch goes off for a loss of separation only. Conflict alert goes off in anticipation of said event, giving controllers an alert and depending on the circumstances 10 sec - 2 minutes to fix. The difference being in lets say level flight, head on, both aircraft on route probably 2 minutes of lead time from conflict alert to get it fixed. To the other extreme, two aircraft in holding one left turns, one right turns, same altitude, about 10 seconds to none. It is a matter of the computer able to predict what is going on and it is not the best when both aircraft are off route on vectors and in large banking turns, it takes 30 secs or more for it to update conflict alert on the turns, both coming at each other it will likely go off when you have lost separation already. When you do bust the bubble (5 miles) it is marked at the ops desk and QA is notified. A phone call is usually made to the sup behind you and they are over going whats going on. The snitch will go off for visual separation so tapes are pulled to ensure you said your part correctly and the pilot acknowledged correctly. It will go off for what is called a mode c swap, when two planes are directly on top of each other 1000ft apart or more the computer sometimes swaps the altitudes with each other, and now shows them at the same altitude, a weird thing but you'll likely hear the controller asking you to verify altitude, even though we know you didn't move just to make it official. It did/does go off for busting 5 miles in 3 mile airspace, which some centers have. This was fixed in ERAM so for most centers this doesn't happen anymore. But except for those few odd ball circumstances the actual "snitch" only turns on when you have actually had a loss of separation. Conflict alert on the other hand triggers a lot more false alerts, i.e. you turned the a/c for traffic already but the computer thinks they are still going at each other. Or you stopped an a/c 1000ft below/above another but didnt enter it in the machine so it thinks they are still going through them. For a variety of reasons you may not want to enter the temporary level off (i.e. flashing a handoff to the next sector with the intent of them still going to another altitude).

All our phone lines on the control room floor have been recorded lines for as long as I can remember, with a few exceptions that were fixed once something happened and they tried to pull the tapes and found out it wasn't recorded.
 
This whole thing just doesn't add up.

If it was a momentary radar hiccup on the mode C readout, they wouldn't have you call, those are regular occurrences.

If it was your altimeter or your gear, you would have also shown incorrect when level at 7000'.

Some part of this story just doesn't line up, either we're missing part of the equation, or there was a seriously over zealous guy working the mic that day.

I'm not saying you're not telling 100% the truth, but something just doesn't add up here is all.
 
FM_Weasel said:
b. Where the public access telephone is recorded,
a beeper tone is not required. In place of the “beep”
tone the FCC has substituted a mandatory requirement
that persons to be recorded be given notice they
are to be recorded and give consent. Notice is given
by this entry, consent to record is assumed by the
individual placing a call to the operational facility.
Click to expand...

When I was an ATC'er the lady at the sandwich shop wouldn't take our order on a recorded line (the beep). We had to call from the admin's desk.

Guess she thought we were going to bust her because we said no mayo and had it on tape.
 
klkm said:
All enroute only info: The snitch goes off for a loss of separation only. Conflict alert goes off in anticipation of said event, giving controllers an alert and depending on the circumstances 10 sec - 2 minutes to fix. The difference being in lets say level flight, head on, both aircraft on route probably 2 minutes of lead time from conflict alert to get it fixed. To the other extreme, two aircraft in holding one left turns, one right turns, same altitude, about 10 seconds to none. It is a matter of the computer able to predict what is going on and it is not the best when both aircraft are off route on vectors and in large banking turns, it takes 30 secs or more for it to update conflict alert on the turns, both coming at each other it will likely go off when you have lost separation already. When you do bust the bubble (5 miles) it is marked at the ops desk and QA is notified. A phone call is usually made to the sup behind you and they are over going whats going on. The snitch will go off for visual separation so tapes are pulled to ensure you said your part correctly and the pilot acknowledged correctly. It will go off for what is called a mode c swap, when two planes are directly on top of each other 1000ft apart or more the computer sometimes swaps the altitudes with each other, and now shows them at the same altitude, a weird thing but you'll likely hear the controller asking you to verify altitude, even though we know you didn't move just to make it official. It did/does go off for busting 5 miles in 3 mile airspace, which some centers have. This was fixed in ERAM so for most centers this doesn't happen anymore. But except for those few odd ball circumstances the actual "snitch" only turns on when you have actually had a loss of separation. Conflict alert on the other hand triggers a lot more false alerts, i.e. you turned the a/c for traffic already but the computer thinks they are still going at each other. Or you stopped an a/c 1000ft below/above another but didnt enter it in the machine so it thinks they are still going through them. For a variety of reasons you may not want to enter the temporary level off (i.e. flashing a handoff to the next sector with the intent of them still going to another altitude).

All our phone lines on the control room floor have been recorded lines for as long as I can remember, with a few exceptions that were fixed once something happened and they tried to pull the tapes and found out it wasn't recorded.
Click to expand...

Thanks.
 
Thanks for all the input.

So far, no call from anyone nor LOI in the mail. I do understand that can take a while.

The guy at the center told me the FSDO would be calling me and thus far I haven't heard a thing. Knock on wood!
 
Had one SWA pilot bust his altitude once, with traffic ahead but not too close. I reissued the altitude and traffic. He came back "errrrrr uhhh ......what's the altimeter?" Turned off his mode C and descended back down. I just said, "Good Answer".
 
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