Narrative:

New arrival procedures just implemented with seattle center due to greener skies which allow more aircraft into our TRACON airspace which in my opinion is new to us and the center and the procedures are not finely tuned yet. I was working arrival east and west and in a matter of 15 minutes or more the airspace became very busy with arrivals to seattle; arrivals to boeing and arrivals to paine airport which we now control. I was at my maximum ability to separate all the aircraft that I had during the last 20 minutes or so of my time on position. As it was getting busier I looked over towards the supervisor and was thinking of calling for help and then realized that he wasn't even aware of the building volume and was just standing away from the scopes in front of his desk doing nothing at the moment. I did not see a traffic management specialist in the room either. I was getting so busy that I decided to just slug it out. In hindsight I should have taken that moment and yelled for the supervisor to either split the arrival positions or get an extra set of eyes over to me. We have tools to forecast the upcoming hour's potential traffic and the supervisor responsibility is to open and close positions with this knowledge. The supervisors in our room; particularly this one; are known to open/split positions when we either don't need to but have many controllers on shift and it makes them look good and also the flip side they also don't open/split positions up at times when traffic is building. In other words they don't use good judgment; it is random to why they open and close positions. In this case they should have had arrival west open and arrival east open earlier instead of keeping it combined. I do believe that we did not have as many controllers available in the room on that day shift as we usually do. The supervisor just was not aware of the room situation. Our supervisors are not aware of how to use the controllers in an effective way. We get caught too often either splitting positions open with little volume of traffic but lots of controllers or like yesterday positions are combined when they should not be because the supervisors are not being proactive and aware.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: S46 Controller described a very busy traffic period when supervisors were apparently unaware of the building traffic and taking no action to assist; the reporter noting a continued lack of attentive supervision in the control room.

Narrative: New arrival procedures just implemented with Seattle Center due to greener skies which allow more aircraft into our TRACON airspace which in my opinion is new to us and the Center and the procedures are not finely tuned yet. I was working arrival east and west and in a matter of 15 minutes or more the airspace became very busy with arrivals to Seattle; arrivals to Boeing and arrivals to Paine Airport which we now control. I was at my maximum ability to separate all the aircraft that I had during the last 20 minutes or so of my time on position. As it was getting busier I looked over towards the Supervisor and was thinking of calling for help and then realized that he wasn't even aware of the building volume and was just standing away from the scopes in front of his desk doing nothing at the moment. I did not see a Traffic Management Specialist in the room either. I was getting so busy that I decided to just slug it out. In hindsight I should have taken that moment and yelled for the Supervisor to either split the arrival positions or get an extra set of eyes over to me. We have tools to forecast the upcoming hour's potential traffic and the supervisor responsibility is to open and close positions with this knowledge. The supervisors in our room; particularly this one; are known to open/split positions when we either don't need to but have many controllers on shift and it makes them look good and also the flip side they also don't open/split positions up at times when traffic is building. In other words they don't use good judgment; it is random to why they open and close positions. In this case they should have had Arrival West open and Arrival East open earlier instead of keeping it combined. I do believe that we did NOT have as many controllers available in the room on that day shift as we usually do. The Supervisor just was not aware of the room situation. Our supervisors are not aware of how to use the controllers in an effective way. We get caught too often either splitting positions open with little volume of traffic but lots of controllers or like yesterday positions are combined when they should NOT be because the supervisors are not being proactive and aware.

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.