Narrative:

Shortly after starting my shift I am scheduled to release 15 flights; 6 of which are ETOPS which depart within a ninety minute span. One additional ETOPS flight is scheduled to be released 90 minutes later. On this day there were enroute SIGMET's and PIREP's for turbulence over the pacific that required additional work and time to avoid plus there were reported and forecast turbulence over the sierras that affected my assigned west coast flights. The area of reported and forecast turbulence for the ETOPS flights was very large. Altitude and route planning consumed a lot of time. Five minutes turns into 25 minutes and so on. Other than trying to release the west coast flights I was assigned; I was unable to pay any attention to the flights while enroute. I struggled to maintain up to date info on the ETOPS flights which I gave highest priority. Only when prodded by an ACARS message would my attention shift to the domestic flights. In addition to preparing and releasing the assigned flights; I also received numerous phone calls for crew briefings. There were a lot of negative PIREP's in the system which required changing normally filed routes and altitudes which created heavy phone traffic from pilots looking for updated and more specific information. Throw in the last minute aircraft swaps on ETOPS flights and whatever else goes on and it amounted to a day where I completely forgot about the flying along the coast except for what was needed to get them released. There was definitely good reason with the enroute ride reports and windshear forecast to move onshore in the basin to be fully aware of what was going on with all assigned flights for me to watch. Situational awareness was lost for quite sometime. How long? No telling; more then 45 minutes at least. I didn't mention the seven ETOPS flights already enroute. So that is seven enroute and seven planning plus watching the 15-20 domestic flights plus the crew briefings. Time goes by very quickly when you're busy and completely involved with all this stuff. You can only juggle so much before something will fall by the wayside. There is way too much asked of us.the company needs to decrease dispatchers' assigned workloads and decrease the number of assigned geographical areas to oversee.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An air carrier Dispatcher recounted in detail what he believes to be excessive workloads that make it impossible to provide the support for which he is responsible to flights under his purview.

Narrative: Shortly after starting my shift I am scheduled to release 15 flights; 6 of which are ETOPS which depart within a ninety minute span. One additional ETOPS flight is scheduled to be released 90 minutes later. On this day there were enroute SIGMET's and PIREP's for turbulence over the Pacific that required additional work and time to avoid plus there were reported and forecast turbulence over the Sierras that affected my assigned West Coast flights. The area of reported and forecast turbulence for the ETOPS flights was very large. Altitude and route planning consumed a lot of time. Five minutes turns into 25 minutes and so on. Other than trying to release the West Coast flights I was assigned; I was unable to pay any attention to the flights while enroute. I struggled to maintain up to date info on the ETOPS flights which I gave highest priority. Only when prodded by an ACARS message would my attention shift to the domestic flights. In addition to preparing and releasing the assigned flights; I also received numerous phone calls for crew briefings. There were a lot of negative PIREP's in the system which required changing normally filed routes and altitudes which created heavy phone traffic from pilots looking for updated and more specific information. Throw in the last minute aircraft swaps on ETOPS flights and whatever else goes on and it amounted to a day where I completely forgot about the flying along the coast except for what was needed to get them released. There was definitely good reason with the enroute ride reports and windshear forecast to move onshore in the basin to be fully aware of what was going on with all assigned flights for me to watch. Situational awareness was lost for quite sometime. How long? No telling; more then 45 minutes at least. I didn't mention the seven ETOPS flights already enroute. So that is seven enroute and seven planning plus watching the 15-20 domestic flights plus the crew briefings. Time goes by very quickly when you're busy and completely involved with all this stuff. You can only juggle so much before something will fall by the wayside. There is way too much asked of us.The company needs to decrease Dispatchers' assigned workloads and decrease the number of assigned geographical areas to oversee.

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.