Narrative:

One of my co-workers just had a deal with an emb-145 aircraft who deviated through some pretty severe weather and got too close with one behind him. Approximately 30 minutes before this event happened I was working on the opposite side of the room on north departure when I heard the controller clear an aircraft on an unusual route to iah. I looked at his sector; and the weather; and noticed that the weather had almost perfectly filled the lateral boundaries of his airspace. There was a controller in charge on duty at the time; so I told the controller in charge that this is ridiculous that once again we are running aircraft through massive amounts of weather when there are 3 other perfectly good arrival sectors around us with no depicted weather at all. This is a constant issue in our area here on the northeast corner of houston center. During the summer storm season we are constantly running aircraft through weather in lieu of formulating a plan to bring them safely around the weather. In this situation; the cpc had transferred radar identification on the 2 involved aircraft to houston approach control; switched the lead aircraft and then ended up having the lead aircraft turn south cutting off the trailing aircraft. Just the fact that we were driving them through moderate to extreme precipitation is ridiculous enough let alone the fact that we do this on a daily basis around here with what appears to be no forethought. I believe that we need to shift our thinking at ZHU to better parallel the 'safety culture' that the agency professes to embrace. We need to start acknowledging the fact that we are putting aircraft in unnecessary proximity to weather and take the opportunity to put them on alternative arrivals when they are available. Forcing them to pick their way through weather lends itself to a margin of unsafe operation that should be considered unacceptable to all of us.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZHU Controller voiced concern regarding the facilities propensity to direct aircraft through known weather conditions when alternative routing are available; noting the FAA's Safety Culture is simply being ignored.

Narrative: One of my co-workers just had a deal with an EMB-145 aircraft who deviated through some pretty severe weather and got too close with one behind him. Approximately 30 minutes before this event happened I was working on the opposite side of the room on north departure when I heard the Controller clear an aircraft on an unusual route to IAH. I looked at his sector; and the weather; and noticed that the weather had almost perfectly filled the lateral boundaries of his airspace. There was a CIC on duty at the time; so I told the CIC that this is ridiculous that once again we are running aircraft through massive amounts of weather when there are 3 other perfectly good arrival sectors around us with no depicted weather at all. This is a constant issue in our area here on the northeast corner of Houston Center. During the summer storm season we are constantly running aircraft through weather in lieu of formulating a plan to bring them safely around the weather. In this situation; the CPC had transferred RADAR identification on the 2 involved aircraft to Houston Approach Control; switched the lead aircraft and then ended up having the lead aircraft turn South cutting off the trailing aircraft. Just the fact that we were driving them through moderate to extreme precipitation is ridiculous enough let alone the fact that we do this on a daily basis around here with what appears to be no forethought. I believe that we need to shift our thinking at ZHU to better parallel the 'Safety Culture' that the agency professes to embrace. We need to start acknowledging the fact that we are putting aircraft in unnecessary proximity to weather and take the opportunity to put them on alternative arrivals when they are available. Forcing them to pick their way through weather lends itself to a margin of unsafe operation that should be considered unacceptable to all of us.

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.