Narrative:

Arrived for my shift; completed my pre-duty items; and walked into a busy aisle; with all sectors yellow and heavy volume with reroutes/offloads. Was assigned RA52. Immediately noticed heavy volume and impending heavier volume and complexity coming from canada. Anticipating this volume; at xa:15 I asked the supervisor if the sector should be split. He replied he was unable to split the sector due to staffing; and if he had people he would split both 52/53 and 36/37.soon thereafter; the volume hit; and the sector went out of control. While no losses of separation occurred; we had several near airspace violations; and were unable to manage the volume effectively. Several pairs of aircraft were missed; requiring sector 39; who was also busy; to work extra hard to get spacing. Additionally; more than one hand off was misdirected; and other frequency changes were late; requiring adjacent; busy sectors to work harder. Finally; a minimum fuel aircraft became involved; which developed into an emergency fuel situation in the next sector as we did not have sufficient staff to provide expeditious handling.this happened because the assigned task exceeded the capability of the two controllers to successfully complete; and no staffing was available to split the sector. Further; when I requested time to fill out [a report]; I was informed the aisle was too short to give me time; and I would have to fill out the [report] on my own time; which I did. This was caused by inadequate staffing.once the sector was unable to be split; no tmu (traffic management unit) initiatives were put in place to manage the reduced capacity due to the sector having to remain combined. The requirement that the region must approve a tmu initiative for staffing is simply ludicrous; as the region is too far removed from the operation to make real-time decisions on tmu initiatives. We can't have a safety culture as required by the FAA's safety management system if we are too short-staffed to give people time to fill out reports.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZBW Controller reported high volume of traffic and not enough people to work the sectors correctly.

Narrative: Arrived for my shift; completed my pre-duty items; and walked into a busy aisle; with all sectors yellow and heavy volume with reroutes/offloads. Was assigned RA52. Immediately noticed heavy volume and impending heavier volume and complexity coming from Canada. Anticipating this volume; at XA:15 I asked the Supervisor if the sector should be split. He replied he was unable to split the sector due to staffing; and if he had people he would split both 52/53 and 36/37.Soon thereafter; the volume hit; and the sector went out of control. While no losses of separation occurred; we had several near airspace violations; and were unable to manage the volume effectively. Several pairs of aircraft were missed; requiring Sector 39; who was also busy; to work extra hard to get spacing. Additionally; more than one hand off was misdirected; and other frequency changes were late; requiring adjacent; busy sectors to work harder. Finally; a minimum fuel aircraft became involved; which developed into an emergency fuel situation in the next sector as we did not have sufficient staff to provide expeditious handling.This happened because the assigned task exceeded the capability of the two controllers to successfully complete; and no staffing was available to split the sector. Further; when I requested time to fill out [a report]; I was informed the aisle was too short to give me time; and I would have to fill out the [report] on my own time; which I did. This was caused by inadequate staffing.Once the sector was unable to be split; no TMU (Traffic Management Unit) initiatives were put in place to manage the reduced capacity due to the sector having to remain combined. The requirement that the region must approve a TMU initiative for staffing is simply ludicrous; as the region is too far removed from the operation to make real-time decisions on TMU initiatives. We can't have a safety culture as required by the FAA's Safety Management System if we are too short-staffed to give people time to fill out reports.

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.