Narrative:

I was working a sector which should have been split off. It is an extremely busy and transmission-laden position that works three busy satellite airports with many student pilots with multiple requests and language difficulties as well. During the last minutes of my position time; orlando approach handed me two aircraft in a direct line at the same altitude with a 1.5 times overtake. The front aircraft; aircraft Y was doing 100kts and the back aircraft; aircraft X a twin was doing 150kts. Before aircraft X reached my boundary; the separation was already down to under 5 miles. Right at that time is when the relieving control got in and the briefing started. There was much other activity and coordination to accomplish before; during; and directly after the completion of the briefing. By the time the relieving controller had been in position for 1 minute the separation between the two aircraft had reduced to under three miles. There was way too much going on to identify and respond to this overtake situation that was handed to our position to respond adequately. The position needs to be split sooner and more often. When not split; one controller is looking at airspace from south of sua to north of X26 and 40 miles across; with practice approaches going on at almost all airports. Otherwise; simply not being handed an aircraft going 1.5 times faster than the one in front of it; with less than a two-mile cushion to do something with the planes would have fixed the problem.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Two PBI TRACON Controllers reported receiving aircraft handoffs from another sector that were already in conflict.

Narrative: I was working a sector which should have been split off. It is an extremely busy and transmission-laden position that works three busy satellite airports with many student pilots with multiple requests and language difficulties as well. During the last minutes of my position time; Orlando Approach handed me two aircraft in a direct line at the same altitude with a 1.5 times overtake. The front aircraft; Aircraft Y was doing 100kts and the back aircraft; Aircraft X a twin was doing 150kts. Before Aircraft X reached my boundary; the separation was already down to under 5 miles. Right at that time is when the relieving control got in and the briefing started. There was much other activity and coordination to accomplish before; during; and directly after the completion of the briefing. By the time the relieving controller had been in position for 1 minute the separation between the two aircraft had reduced to under three miles. There was way too much going on to identify and respond to this overtake situation that was handed to our position to respond adequately. The position needs to be split sooner and more often. When not split; one controller is looking at airspace from south of SUA to north of X26 and 40 miles across; with practice approaches going on at almost all airports. Otherwise; simply not being handed an aircraft going 1.5 times faster than the one in front of it; with less than a two-mile cushion to do something with the planes would have fixed the problem.

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.