Narrative:

Visual approaches were working fine all morning. All of the sudden; without warning from san diego tower or nzy tower personnel; clouds rolled in and obscured the two airports. One airliner missed approach at san; which means the aircraft will be entering my airspace. San local controller coordinated a heading of 250 degrees for the missed approach due to subsequent departure on the roll. No non-standard heading was coordinated with the subsequent departure; but the local controller took the aircraft; air carrier X; off the SID and assigned a heading of 275 degrees without coordinating with me. As the above scenario was unfolding; an arrival to nzy request a PAR approach instead of the coordinated visual approach. This aircraft was going fast and was only approximately 12 miles from the airport; almost straight in. The nzy PAR was showing out of service on the saids. I informed the pilot of this aircraft that the PAR was listed as out of service and to expect an ASR approach. In my scrambling to do all of the manual coordination to get this aircraft quickly called in and handed off to nzy gca; I experienced a stuck mike on my frequency. Nzy gca also informed me that the PAR was not out of service after all. The note on the saids was incorrect. With all the manual coordination inherent to this sector; the sudden change of approach caused a sharp increase in my workload; as did having to deal with a stuck mike. I did not notice until air carrier X entered an adjacent sector without prior coordination that the aircraft had not turned as expected to comply with the SID that I was expecting the aircraft to fly. All of the scrambling to handle these unexpected events could have been averted had someone in each of the two control towers been alert enough to advise this TRACON of the deteriorating weather conditions. Had we had such information; the arrival to san would have been put on an instrument approach instead of a visual approach; and the arrival to nzy would have been assigned an ASR approach much sooner. Also; when nzy tower called in the morning upon opening; no one on our end or their end reviewed the notes on the saids for their accuracy. All of the above factors were made worse by the overly loud noise level of the san area controllers on duty this morning. The supervisors do not ever take action to quiet the unprofessionally loud controllers until complaints are made by the affected controllers. When action is taken; it is only temporarily less noisy. Recommendation; I believe all of these factors were caused by a lack of professionalism. San and nzy towers have windows for those tower personnel to use to observe traffic and weather conditions. Someone in each of these two towers should have informed sct TRACON of the deteriorating weather conditions. Also there was a lack of professionalism on both the towers and sct TRACON for not reviewing notes on the saids for accuracy. I believe the lack of professionalism is due to the increase of inexperienced people being hired to work in complex facilities such as san tower; nzy tower; and sct TRACON. I know for a fact that hiring people with no experience off the street to work at sct TRACON is creating a more dangerous aviation environment. Safety is being sacrificed just to get bodies in the building. There is also a lack of professionalism being displayed by front line managers. The supervisors do not control the noise level until it gets so far out of hand that a responsible controller has to ask the supervisors to quiet people down. There are also many controllers who socialize way too much while working and do not focus on their traffic; or observe deteriorating weather conditions. As far as the age old stuck mike scenarios; there needs to be a way for air traffic control transmitters to overpower the signal generated by the stuck mike aircraft. Then we could keep doing our jobs of ensuring the safety of the flying public during such times.

Google
 

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: SCT Controller described a non coordinated airspace entry event; the reporter claiming the failure of updated local tower weather updates and fellow controller noise distraction/s as causal factors.

Narrative: Visual approaches were working fine all morning. All of the sudden; without warning from San Diego tower or NZY Tower personnel; clouds rolled in and obscured the two airports. One airliner missed approach at SAN; which means the aircraft will be entering my airspace. SAN Local Controller coordinated a heading of 250 degrees for the missed approach due to subsequent departure on the roll. No non-standard heading was coordinated with the subsequent departure; but the Local Controller took the aircraft; Air Carrier X; off the SID and assigned a heading of 275 degrees without coordinating with me. As the above scenario was unfolding; an arrival to NZY request a PAR approach instead of the coordinated visual approach. This aircraft was going fast and was only approximately 12 miles from the airport; almost straight in. The NZY PAR was showing out of service on the SAIDS. I informed the pilot of this aircraft that the PAR was listed as out of service and to expect an ASR approach. In my scrambling to do all of the manual coordination to get this aircraft quickly called in and handed off to NZY GCA; I experienced a stuck mike on my frequency. NZY GCA also informed me that the PAR was not out of service after all. The note on the SAIDS was incorrect. With all the manual coordination inherent to this sector; the sudden change of approach caused a sharp increase in my workload; as did having to deal with a stuck mike. I did not notice until Air Carrier X entered an adjacent sector without prior coordination that the aircraft had not turned as expected to comply with the SID that I was expecting the aircraft to fly. All of the scrambling to handle these unexpected events could have been averted had someone in each of the two control towers been alert enough to advise this TRACON of the deteriorating weather conditions. Had we had such information; the arrival to SAN would have been put on an instrument approach instead of a visual approach; and the arrival to NZY would have been assigned an ASR approach much sooner. Also; when NZY Tower called in the morning upon opening; no one on our end or their end reviewed the notes on the SAIDS for their accuracy. All of the above factors were made worse by the overly loud noise level of the SAN area controllers on duty this morning. The supervisors do not ever take action to quiet the unprofessionally loud controllers until complaints are made by the affected controllers. When action is taken; it is only temporarily less noisy. Recommendation; I believe all of these factors were caused by a lack of professionalism. SAN and NZY towers have windows for those tower personnel to use to observe traffic and weather conditions. Someone in each of these two towers should have informed SCT TRACON of the deteriorating weather conditions. Also there was a lack of professionalism on both the towers and SCT TRACON for not reviewing notes on the SAIDS for accuracy. I believe the lack of professionalism is due to the increase of inexperienced people being hired to work in complex facilities such as SAN tower; NZY tower; and SCT TRACON. I know for a fact that hiring people with no experience off the street to work at SCT TRACON is creating a more dangerous aviation environment. Safety is being sacrificed just to get bodies in the building. There is also a lack of professionalism being displayed by front line managers. The supervisors do not control the noise level until it gets so far out of hand that a responsible controller has to ask the supervisors to quiet people down. There are also many controllers who socialize way too much while working and do not focus on their traffic; or observe deteriorating weather conditions. As far as the age old stuck mike scenarios; there needs to be a way for Air Traffic Control transmitters to overpower the signal generated by the stuck mike aircraft. Then we could keep doing our jobs of ensuring the safety of the flying public during such times.

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.