Narrative:

Over the past few years the amount of information a dispatcher must view; process and act upon has grown exponentially and has reached a level of overload during off-schedule-operations or significant weather disruptions. I believe this has reached a level that can overwhelm a dispatcher and potentially diminish operational control capability. Information automation currently in use in our company appears to be designed to simply deliver the information without regard to applicability to the specific desk to which it is sent. In the past few weather events; I had to sift through hundreds of unrelated messages to glean those that were pertinent to my operation. Many of those messages were complex and had to be read thoroughly to be sure they didn't pertain to me which wastes valuable time during tense periods of diversions; telephone; radio and computer communications with aircraft and station personnel. The screen printer application which absorbs the bulk of the printer functionality constantly tallies messages to be read and at times can reach 75 to 100 messages on queue in just a few minutes. The dispatcher must constantly deplete the queue to ensure that critical messages do not become stale. The dispatcher becomes a slave to the printer heightening the potential for error or unnecessary delay a response to an emergency.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Dispatcher voiced concern regarding the volume of information that must be reviewed during the course of daily operations; critical messages can easily be overlooked.

Narrative: Over the past few years the amount of information a Dispatcher must view; process and act upon has grown exponentially and has reached a level of overload during off-schedule-operations or significant weather disruptions. I believe this has reached a level that can overwhelm a Dispatcher and potentially diminish operational control capability. Information automation currently in use in our company appears to be designed to simply deliver the information without regard to applicability to the specific desk to which it is sent. In the past few weather events; I had to sift through hundreds of unrelated messages to glean those that were pertinent to my operation. Many of those messages were complex and had to be read thoroughly to be sure they didn't pertain to me which wastes valuable time during tense periods of diversions; telephone; radio and computer communications with aircraft and station personnel. The screen printer application which absorbs the bulk of the printer functionality constantly tallies messages to be read and at times can reach 75 to 100 messages on queue in just a few minutes. The Dispatcher must constantly deplete the queue to ensure that critical messages do not become stale. The Dispatcher becomes a slave to the printer heightening the potential for error or unnecessary delay a response to an emergency.

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.