Narrative:

Today the weather was not just centrally located in just one area. We had some type of weather event going on at the majority of the cities we service; low ceiling and visibility; thunderstorms; and even some fog. Also there were flights affected by weather reroutes whether it was issued by ATC or us. I feel that the workload was entirely too high. Especially for the type weather we were dealing with. My first three flights had some type of reroute that needed more attention that just issuing it. The operations per hour were too high for what was going on. At times I felt that I was loosing operational control whether by flight following; weather amendments; ATC delays; NOTAM changes. There were moments I may have missed a terminal area weather forecast or metar change or unable to flight follow. I was getting mentally fatigued from all the work. Later in my shift the internet went down and the workload increased. More manual data entry to generate a flight release which took time away from flight following and maintaining operational control. Ever since we switched over to the commercial flight planning software; our workload has increased due to additional data entry software to support dispatching flights. Add this to a weather irregular operations day and loosing operational becomes very easy. In my opinion with the staffing we have; the ability to hold operational control (initiate; oversee; terminate) is not achievable.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Dispatcher became overloaded with weather; reroutes; operational delays; and a new software operational control system; claiming the staffing level is insufficient.

Narrative: Today the weather was not just centrally located in just one area. We had some type of weather event going on at the majority of the cities we service; low ceiling and visibility; thunderstorms; and even some fog. Also there were flights affected by weather reroutes whether it was issued by ATC or us. I feel that the workload was entirely too high. Especially for the type weather we were dealing with. My first three flights had some type of reroute that needed more attention that just issuing it. The operations per hour were too high for what was going on. At times I felt that I was loosing operational control whether by flight following; weather amendments; ATC delays; NOTAM changes. There were moments I may have missed a terminal area weather forecast or METAR change or unable to flight follow. I was getting mentally fatigued from all the work. Later in my shift the internet went down and the workload increased. More manual data entry to generate a flight release which took time away from flight following and maintaining operational control. Ever since we switched over to the commercial flight planning software; our workload has increased due to additional data entry software to support dispatching flights. Add this to a weather irregular operations day and loosing operational becomes very easy. In my opinion with the staffing we have; the ability to hold operational control (initiate; oversee; terminate) is not achievable.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 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.