Narrative:

ZSE eram; a dispatcher filed an ICAO flight plan; when they called by phone to verify acceptance; it was discovered it had rejected. I made several attempts to correct and re-file the flight plan; using the aisr (aeronautical information system replacement). After several attempts rejected; I manually entered the flight plan via the eram (at) workstation. The boxes are very small roughly 4 inches wide and 11 lines long for entry and 4 inches wide and a 1/4 inch high for error correction. Recall screen is 4 inches wide and 3 lines high to make corrections on; all with scroll on a 22 inch monitor. After I had gotten flight plan acceptance; I continued to work on the flight plan during my shift; gathering data for a trouble report of the reject and to see if I could find the error causing the reject. While reviewing the original flight plan; comparing it to what I had entered manually; I discovered an error I had made in the routing. I had entered the wrong latitude/long information. As the aircraft had all ready departed; I immediately sent a service message to appropriate centers down the line with the corrected route information and a copy of the original flight plan. If I had not been searching for the error causing the reject in the first place; I would not have become aware of my typing error and it would have been a deviation error. The window size for each individual work box is way too small and makes it extremely difficult to ensure errors like I made today do not happen; and to perform the job efficiently. This issue was reported 3 years ago and several tickets have been turned since on that issue. The agency needs to have the contractor fix this problem immediately and not continue to put the informational tickets on a back burner; or to place the fixes to the software for delivery to centers yet to come up on eram.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZSE Controller voiced concern regarding ERAM equipment and certain functionalities.

Narrative: ZSE ERAM; a Dispatcher filed an ICAO Flight Plan; when they called by phone to verify acceptance; it was discovered it had rejected. I made several attempts to correct and re-file the Flight Plan; using the AISR (Aeronautical Information System Replacement). After several attempts rejected; I manually entered the Flight Plan via the ERAM (at) workstation. The boxes are very small roughly 4 inches wide and 11 lines long for entry and 4 inches wide and a 1/4 inch high for error correction. Recall screen is 4 inches wide and 3 lines high to make corrections on; all with scroll on a 22 inch monitor. After I had gotten Flight Plan acceptance; I continued to work on the Flight Plan during my shift; gathering data for a trouble report of the reject and to see if I could find the error causing the reject. While reviewing the original Flight Plan; comparing it to what I had entered manually; I discovered an error I had made in the routing. I had entered the wrong LAT/LONG information. As the aircraft had all ready departed; I immediately sent a service message to appropriate Centers down the line with the corrected route information and a copy of the original Flight Plan. If I had not been searching for the error causing the reject in the first place; I would not have become aware of my typing error and it would have been a deviation error. The window size for each individual work box is way too small and makes it extremely difficult to ensure errors like I made today do not happen; and to perform the job efficiently. This issue was reported 3 years ago and several tickets have been turned since on that issue. The agency needs to have the contractor fix this problem immediately and not continue to put the informational tickets on a back burner; or to place the fixes to the software for delivery to Centers yet to come up on ERAM.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.