Dear members,

Here is a summary of what has been discussed:

• We were invited to join the Optimized Sector Manning Project (OSM) and will keep you informed.
• Mas-Mil: We are currently in the process of drafting an idea to further enhance the military integration in our centre. Further information will follow in due time.
• CSS review is progressing well. The final study report will be presented to management very soon.  Then it is up to them to decide and make it hopefully an implementation project.
• Flight department: We will use the vitrine kast in front of the OPS-room in the future to inform our members about any deals we have.
• Facebook: We will start using our Facebook account to distribute certain information. We will start inviting members to join the EGATS group as well.

For any questions and suggestions don’t hesitate to ask us or contact us via email.

The EGATS Executive Board announces that the Annual General Meeting will be held on 08 MARCH 2017 at 20.00h at the Maastricht UAC, Meeting Rooms D3.13/14

There's an opportunity to serve on the EGATS Executive Board, defending the professional interests of its members. Nomination will be accepted until 27 January 2017, using this form. Please return the properly completed form to the Executive Secretary, Michael Ott before the applicable deadline.

Update: the agenda for the meeting

1. Opening—President's Welcome
2. Acceptance of the Draft Minutes AGM 2015: There are no comments to the minutes, so they are accepted unanimously.

3. Reports:


a)    President's Message: Raf quickly explains his report.

b)    Executive Secretary: Michael reports what was talked about in the RRT meeting last week. Two interesting points that came up, but were not solved yet are the interpretation of the +/- 4 working days rule and the rule saying that ATCOs can be asked to stay up to 60min longer up to 12 times a year.

• We are currently trying to get support for starting to work on a bad WX procedure in MUAC. All centers around us seem to have something in place, so why not us?
• Finally a procedure for formation flights has been drafted and will be trained asap via CBT. As well it will be part of the military training coming up.
• EGATS has recognized a trend of more and more buffers being lost over the past years due to financial pressure, etc. This is causing problems sometimes and could become a greater risk in the future. Therefore it is necessary to steer against this development and keep/re-establish certain buffers as safety net. (see as well the Swiss Cheese Model below)
• We will ask for a review of certain decisions/changes made in the past. We will ask to get more involved regarding the professional aspects of the Lippe integration, now that it was decided.

The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Eurocontrol Guild of Air Traffic Services (EGATS), will be held on April 13th 2016, at 20.00h in D3.13/3.14 at MUAC.

For applications to join the Executive Board, the filled out “Nomination Form” has to be returned before April 3rd 2016 to the EGATS locker or directly to Michael Ott Team H4. You can ask any board-member to obtain a nomination form.

The entries and results of the 2015 EGATS Photo Competition are in. The theme for this edition was: 'Doors & Windows'. First place was for Wim Lentjes. Second prize went to Alexandru Ovidiu. Third prize was for Shirley Hicter. All the entries, including the winning ones can be seen in the online album here.

The following topics were discussed

• The board is still busy with some ongoing items, but we cannot present any results yet. The main ones are:
  • Bad WX procedure
  • Training of formation flights
• The board is concerned about how the planning of the x-training to the BSG is progressing. Several colleagues are ready for checkout since months, but no checkouts have been done by now. We will investigate with Luc Staudt.
• After the initiative of one of our colleagues we are working together with TUEM on a questionnaire about stress, fatigue, leave, traffic levels, etc.
• We discussed the OSDR and feel that it is outdated and urgently needs to be replaced by another more flexible system. We will talk to Nick Miller about that.
• NOTAMs and the status of NAV-aids are no longer published on E-brief, however mislaid headsets and validations of other sector groups are. We feel that some fine-tuning is required and will contact Nick Miller for that item.
• The AGM 2016 is planned for 13.04.16. Further updates are coming in the future.

For any questions and suggestions don’t hesitate to ask us or contact us via email.

Your EGATS EB

The following topics were discussed:

Bad WX procedures: The board has gathered some information from centres all around the world how they handle bad weather and strongly promotes to introduce a bad WX procedure in MUAC. In our eyes at the moment the decision is too much left to the DSUP and a firm procedure is needed.

Brussels Sectors: We are very critical about the Brussels sector group leave plan for next year and already voiced our concerns via the appropriate channels. The Planning office is currently working on freeing up extra leave slots for staff.

 Update: The draft minutes of the 2015 EGATS AGM can be found here.

The EGATS Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be held on March 2nd 2015, starting at 20:00lcl at the Maastricht UAC Centre.

The preliminary agenda is as follows:

1. Opening—President’s Welcome
2. Acceptance of the Draft Minutes AGM 2014
3. Reports:
   1. President’s Message
   2. Executive Secretary
   3. Professional Committee and Technical Committee

The latest issue of OUPUT, the magazine for EGATS members is now available here. Members will find a host of articles in this issues, including subjects such as Just Culture, IFATCA ERM 2014 Zadar, EGATS Photo Competition 2014, The international day of the controller and much much more.