Narrative:

Aircraft X was doing the F route through iah tower airspace from dwh and to hou. We were on an east flow and the F routing would take aircraft X through our finals. Aircraft Y was inbound final runway 8R. I recognized early that there would be a problem. I had questioned myself as to whether or not a helicopter could do visual with an A380 super. I knew airplanes couldn't. Anyway; as soon as I issued the clearance; aircraft X accepted the visual separation and my monitor called and said he didn't think I could do that. I called back down after the aircraft X passed and thanked my monitor. I stopped the helicopter under my final and held him until I had 8 miles with the super as the helo is an F and the super is an a. There was no loss; but this whole session I was out of synch because of the recat having the different separation requirements and the tpa/atpa being turned on too adding mileage information to the data blocks. Our training was pretty high altitude. We should have probably had some sim time on this as the display is enough with the new display to throw you off. Several people commented on this today. I knew the rule; but with all of this new stuff I guess it just threw me off. Embarrassing! But a good refresher.I would recommend better training than just some slides; Q&a; and a card with wake turbulence tables on it. I will say the wake turbulence card is saving us though. Everyone should get that at all facilities as they transition and I'm sure they will. By the end of the session the requirements were getting more automatic; but I still don't have them down.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: IAH Controller has a helicopter and an A380 Super aircraft. Controller applies visual separation from the helicopter to the Super. Controller finds out this is not allowed and implements another form of separation.

Narrative: Aircraft X was doing the F route through IAH tower airspace from DWH and to HOU. We were on an East flow and the F routing would take Aircraft X through our finals. Aircraft Y was inbound final runway 8R. I recognized early that there would be a problem. I had questioned myself as to whether or not a helicopter could do visual with an A380 Super. I knew airplanes couldn't. Anyway; as soon as I issued the clearance; Aircraft X accepted the visual separation and my monitor called and said he didn't think I could do that. I called back down after the Aircraft X passed and thanked my monitor. I stopped the helicopter under my final and held him until I had 8 miles with the Super as the Helo is an F and the Super is an A. There was no loss; but this whole session I was out of synch because of the recat having the different separation requirements and the TPA/ATPA being turned on too adding mileage information to the data blocks. Our training was pretty high altitude. We should have probably had some sim time on this as the display is enough with the new display to throw you off. Several people commented on this today. I knew the rule; but with all of this new stuff I guess it just threw me off. Embarrassing! But a good refresher.I would recommend better training than just some slides; Q&A; and a card with Wake Turbulence tables on it. I will say the Wake Turbulence card is saving us though. Everyone should get that at all facilities as they transition and I'm sure they will. By the end of the session the requirements were getting more automatic; but I still don't have them down.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site 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.