Narrative:

I was working D91; combined with 65. We track military airspace activity via the uret schedule; which creates it's own sets of problems. However; this situation manifested because of another issue. As is my custom when I first come in on a shift; I checked uret for military activity. It showed R2301W and R2301E active; but not the sells MOA/atcaa. A few hours later the tmu mos came down to tell the supervisor that the uret airspace had gotten deleted in uret and that they were not sure if it was hot. I saw several mode C intruders in the areas (south of gbn); and told the tmu mos that sells hadn't shown active in uret since I had come in. The current method we use for military airspace is cumbersome and contrary to human factor in many regards. Couple this with a task saturated mos position; short notice activation of military airspace with no prior briefing from airspace on unusual missions; and what I consider to be the built in propensity for increased error in uret due to design; and you can see how the holes in the swiss cheese model can allow latent error to manifest in an event. Had R2301E and west not been hot; we might have inadvertently violated sells. As it was; we got lucky.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZAB Controller voiced concern regarding the current coordination procedures used to notify restricted airspace usage. Combined with URET design flaws coordination is frequently inaccurate and untimely.

Narrative: I was working D91; combined with 65. We track military airspace activity via the URET schedule; which creates it's own sets of problems. However; this situation manifested because of another issue. As is my custom when I first come in on a shift; I checked URET for military activity. It showed R2301W and R2301E active; but not the SELLS MOA/ATCAA. A few hours later the TMU MOS came down to tell the Supervisor that the URET airspace had gotten deleted in URET and that they were not sure if it was hot. I saw several Mode C intruders in the areas (south of GBN); and told the TMU MOS that SELLS hadn't shown active in URET since I had come in. The current method we use for military airspace is cumbersome and contrary to human factor in many regards. Couple this with a task saturated MOS position; short notice activation of military airspace with no prior briefing from airspace on unusual missions; and what I consider to be the built in propensity for increased error in URET due to design; and you can see how the holes in the Swiss Cheese Model can allow latent error to manifest in an event. Had R2301E and W not been hot; we might have inadvertently violated SELLS. As it was; we got lucky.

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.