Narrative:

I was working a BE55 on the preferential routing at 4000 feet which causes the aircraft's route of flight to enter an area where N90 catskill radar hand offs are often accepted late and close to the boundary. I was also working several aircraft arriving to satellite airports over a control span of 100 miles and several departing and en route aircraft. Two aircraft arriving at a satellite field where the final overlaps the bdl runway 33 departure area were denied point outs by bdl tower creating subsequent vectoring and coordination. Multiple voice attempts were made to contact N90 catskill on two different landlines for hand off calls; but were never answered. The BE55 was given a vector away from the boundary while the attempts were being made. When the BE55 had begun the turn to be contained in Y90 airspace; N90 accepted the radar hand off. The BE55 was redirected back on the flight plan and communications were transferred to N90. While I feel there was the required 1.5NM boundary separation; subsequent actions and coordination prohibited me from directly determining if the 1.5 NM boundary separation was there during the BE55 turning. Recommendation; this is a common occurrence in this area and is attributed to N90's radar coverage in that area. While Y90 has acquired additional airspace that alleviates this problem somewhat on a hfd..pwl routing; the new airspace did not include additional airspace for the baf..pwl routing. Additionally; the common practice lately of combining Y90 wd and or positions creates a 100 mile scan that includes departures from the main airport of bdl; inbounds to handle initial approach information for bdl; arrival and departure traffic from 3 towered satellite airports; tec en route traffic and several non-towered airports with instrument approaches. Two primary suggestions: (1) return to the practice of splitting the two positions; and (2) seek to acquire additional airspace along the west side of Y90 airspace in the wd sector that will alleviate the attributed radar problem.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Y90 controller described a near airspace boundary infraction with N90; the reporter noting hand off failures to N90 were common in this area; allegedly due to limited N90 RADAR coverage.

Narrative: I was working a BE55 on the preferential routing at 4000 feet which causes the aircraft's route of flight to enter an area where N90 Catskill RADAR hand offs are often accepted late and close to the boundary. I was also working several aircraft arriving to satellite airports over a control span of 100 miles and several departing and en route aircraft. Two aircraft arriving at a satellite field where the final overlaps the BDL Runway 33 departure area were denied point outs by BDL Tower creating subsequent vectoring and coordination. Multiple voice attempts were made to contact N90 Catskill on two different landlines for hand off calls; but were never answered. The BE55 was given a vector away from the boundary while the attempts were being made. When the BE55 had begun the turn to be contained in Y90 airspace; N90 accepted the RADAR hand off. The BE55 was redirected back on the flight plan and communications were transferred to N90. While I feel there was the required 1.5NM boundary separation; subsequent actions and coordination prohibited me from directly determining if the 1.5 NM boundary separation was there during the BE55 turning. Recommendation; this is a common occurrence in this area and is attributed to N90's RADAR coverage in that area. While Y90 has acquired additional airspace that alleviates this problem somewhat on a HFD..PWL routing; the new airspace did not include additional airspace for the BAF..PWL routing. Additionally; the common practice lately of combining Y90 WD and OR positions creates a 100 mile scan that includes departures from the main airport of BDL; inbounds to handle initial approach information for BDL; arrival and departure traffic from 3 towered satellite airports; TEC en route traffic and several non-towered airports with instrument approaches. Two primary suggestions: (1) Return to the practice of splitting the two positions; and (2) seek to acquire additional airspace along the west side of Y90 airspace in the WD sector that will alleviate the attributed radar problem.

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.