New Operations Staff Members and Team Structure

It gives me great pleasure to announce that @James Bayliss-de Gruchy and @Mohamed Ouahchia have accepted offers to join the staff team as Events Assistants. They will assist the Events Manager in organising the UK's event's schedule.

Also joining the team is @Ben Walker as the new Sector File Coordinator (replacing Peter Mooney, who has moved to Deputy Operations Director). Ben has been an active contributor to Operations for some time now and he sets an excellent example of how to get involved with the division from a grassroots level, contributing to the sector file and more recently ATC Documentation. 

Congratulations to all three on their appointments! The new additions to the team mean we have only one remaining vacancy - the Enroute Operations Cooridnator role. If you think you have the necessary skills and desire to help out, then please do get in touch.

ATC Documentation - docs.vatsim.uk

We have launched a new online documentation site! Thus far, only Airfield Controller Briefings (mini-vMATS), known colloquially as "ACBs" have been imported into this new format (e.g. EGKR, EGMC, etc.). Other documents (vMATS, Cribs, ALDs) are embedded in a PDF format (also downloadable) and will be converted to the website format in due course. The main benefits of the new system are:

• A site-wide search function
• Replaces the forum download system (which is becoming prohibitively expensive to maintain)
• Documentation can be edited and accessed in a GitHub repository (making changes and updates much simpler to implement)
• Dark/light/system colour scheme
• In-browser reading, means you are always viewing the latest version
• Abbreviation definitions: Anywhere you see a blue dotted underline of an acronym, hover over to see what it means

If you have feedback on the new system (positive or negative), please open a ticket to Operations in the helpdesk so issues can be tracked appropriately.

The new website will run alongside the forum for a while whilst we iron out teething issues.

Other Points of Interest/On-going Projects

• Crib Sheet Review - being conducted by @Alice Ford has recently closed a division-wide survey on the contents and usefulness of cribsheets.
• A-CDM Plugin - A plugin that mimics real world departure flow control, integrating with ECFMP flow restrictions that has been included with the latest UK Controller Pack thanks to @Luke Brown. https://docs.vatsim.uk/General/Use of Software/A-CDM/
• 2024 Airfield and Traffic Statistics - orgnaised by @Kye Taylor and the Community Team. https://community.vatsim.uk/blogs/entry/584-2024-statistics-and-review/
• Manchester Controller Guidance - Work in Progress with thanks to @Callum McLoughlin and @Archie Middlefell. More on this to follow.

Any questions or feedback for the department, please get in touch: jack.edwards[at]vatsim.uk or via helpdesk.

Fly safe,

Jack