Happy new year of AIRACs from the Operations Department.

I have to start the post with a thank you to my staff for yet another year of hard work. @Luke Brown, Harry, @Peter Mooney, @Adam Arkley, @Kye Taylor, @Chad Byworth and @Harrison Grose, thank you for all you've put in over 2023 and for all the jobs behind-the-scenes that go unnnoticed.

Network Traffic

The network continues to get busier - and the UK is no exception, with nearly 80000 more movements than last year. Currently this means we handle over 1300 flights per day to VATSIM UK airports.

The UK is host to 3 of the top 6 airports of the network in 2023, specifically Heathrow (2nd), Gatwick (3rd) and Manchester (6th). As you can see below, Heathrow has reclaimed it's 'top spot' back from Gatwick and our fastest growing airport by traffic movements is Stansted for a second year in a row.

Sector File and Controller Pack

The Controller Pack and sector file have seen a huge amount of activity this year, with 8 pack releases and 12 sector files published in 2023.

The Controller Pack releases have included handfulls of enhancements, including numerous TC/MPC/STC profiles, Channel Islands profile sets, Military profiles and lots of updates to our aerodrome settings and lists. Well done to @Luke Brown for his leadership of this project, and his own 2,271,205 line changes in 2023. A special mention to @Samuel Lefevre as the top contributor from outside the Ops team.

@Peter Mooneyhas done a great job with the sector file, taking this over at the start of 2023. We've seen 82768 line changes over 601 comits to the repository. With 218 of these commits from Peter himself, we are in good hands going into 2024. Special mention for the sector file goes to @Alice Ford as the top contributor from outside the Operations team.

You can get involved in both of these projects, to create enhancements and help us keep up to date with AIRAC changes. Make sure you read the contributor guide first!

https://github.com/VATSIM-UK/UK-Sector-File

https://github.com/VATSIM-UK/uk-controller-pack

Notable Projects

The main department-wide projects this year have been the West Airspace Deployment in March and the 8.33 frequency trial and transition from September. Both took substantial resources from the department and I'm pleased at how well everything came together.

Alongside numerous updates to our supported documentation, we've released a new vMATS for Liverpool and East Midlands, returning these to our modern format and re-introducing them as 'supported' - meaning that we update them multiple times a year with AIRAC changes. After March's West Airspace Deployment, our Area documentation has included substantial clarification to internal and external agreed level procedures, updating Shanwick to include OWAFS and a few days ago the introduction of TC Midlands as a permanently available area sector for our controllers.

2024

We go into 2024 a few hands short, with Adam taking on the role of ATC Training Director and having unfortunately seen the end of Harry's time as our Enroute Operations Coordinator. The end of 2023 was quite a challenging time for the Division with many staff resignations and my attention divided between additional responsibilities as a result. I'm looking forward to an Operations-focused start to 2024, which will include opening up some applications to fill vacant roles.

Happy New Year everyone.