{"id":22225,"date":"2023-05-09T09:17:56","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T13:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/?p=22225"},"modified":"2023-05-09T09:17:56","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T13:17:56","slug":"finished-the-faa-northeast-corridor-improvements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/finished-the-faa-northeast-corridor-improvements\/","title":{"rendered":"Finished: The FAA Northeast Corridor Improvements"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s finally done. On April 20, the last phase of the FAA’s Northeast Corridor Atlantic Coast Routes Project<\/a> crossed the finish line, officially ending (well almost) the biggest change to the US NAS<\/strong> in decades.<\/p>\n

And April was perhaps the largest update yet – here’s a summary of exactly what went down.<\/p>\n

Wait, the what?<\/h4>\n

If you haven’t heard of it, our previous article<\/a> may be a good place to start. But in a nutshell, over the past few years the FAA has been introducing new and amended Q and Y-routes<\/strong> to replace the high-altitude route structure running north and south along the US East Coast.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

….Asking for a friend, what are J, Q and Y routes again? <\/em><\/p>\n

J-routes (or jet routes) are high altitude airways (FL180 – 450) that rely on VOR or VORTAC fixes back on ol’ terra firma. Q and Y-routes are based off RNAV (GPS) navigation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It’s not that the existing airways were broken, but they were showing their age. The project has been part of a larger transition away from ground based NAVAIDs and towards PBN-centric US skies<\/strong> – i.e. satellite based navigation, the good stuff.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The legacy J-Routes are far less efficient than satellite based ones. Courtesy: FAA<\/p><\/div>\n

Rome wasn’t built in a day – and neither was this project it seems. In fact, changes first appeared back in October 2019 – then the world caught the flu. Since then the roll-out has been delayed several times<\/strong> with staggered changes spanning the past three years.<\/p>\n

If you’d like to see a complete list of those 160+ changes, the FAA has produced this handy slide<\/a>. For the ones that came into effect on April 20, read on…<\/p>\n

The April 20 Update<\/h4>\n

The final seven J-routes on the chopping block were axed (J37, J55, J79, J121, J174, J191, and J209), along with a number of their associated fixes. In their place twenty Q-routes<\/a> were either introduced or amended.<\/p>\n

To make sure all these new routes were set up and ready to use, most were published last year.<\/strong> However there were a stack of ‘not authorised’ Notams in the system that have now been removed – essentially raising the barrier for traffic to actually use them.<\/p>\n

\"\"

A bunch of ‘not authorized’ Notams have now been cancelled.<\/p><\/div>\n

On the East Coast, STARs at three major airports were amended to remove ground-based transitions. At KPHL\/Philadelphia<\/strong>, look out for new ones on the JIIMS 4 and PAATS 4 arrivals. At KEWR\/Newark<\/strong>, the PHLBO 4 has been updated along with the JAIKE 4 over at KTEB\/Teterboro<\/strong>. The good folk over at the Teterboro User’s Group have published some additional information<\/a> on the latter.<\/p>\n

The Goal Posts<\/h4>\n

Let’s address an elephant in the room<\/strong>. There’s a small chance someone will call us on the ‘finish line’ statement – fair game. There are some small changes still to come<\/strong> on June 15 – one more Q-route is being updated (Q101). There will also be a new STAR at KCLT\/Charlotte<\/strong> along with some deletions. But the big changes are now done and dusted.<\/p>\n

There’s Been A Little Trouble<\/h4>\n

Since the changes on April 20, news from the Boston ARTCC has been that foreign operators inbound from the NAT have not always been filing the new preferred IFR routes.<\/strong> This is causing a bit of headache at the boundary for pilots and controllers while traffic is ‘re-jigged.’ To see the preferred ones, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The worst is likely over already, but the FAA has also advised airborne delays are possible<\/strong> while the system gets used to the changes. ATC may apply traffic management procedures to help keep the flow orderly. Consider a little more contingency fuel while things settle down.<\/p>\n

Still have questions?<\/h4>\n

There are couple of FAA contacts provided in the official briefing:<\/p>\n

Reggie Davis FAA Management Co-Lead <\/strong>reginald.e.davis@faa.gov<\/a>
\n<\/strong>Joey Tinsley NATCA Co-Lead\u00a0<\/strong>joseph.b.tinsley@faa.gov<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s finally done. On April 20, the last phase of the FAA’s Northeast Corridor Atlantic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":22307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2052,2185,2187],"class_list":{"0":"post-22225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-briefings","8":"tag-nas","9":"tag-nec","10":"tag-northeast-corridor"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22225"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22308,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22225\/revisions\/22308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}