New Auto ATC Advisory Trial in US Airspace

VATSIM Announcements
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VATSIM is excited to announce the trial of a new system within the VATUSA Division. Auto ATC will enhance your flying experience in unstaffed US airspace by providing automated ATC advisories.

What is Auto ATC and what capability does it bring?

Auto ATC determines if you are departing an area without ATC staffing, and provides you your assigned beacon code to make transition to controlled airspace easier later in your flight. Auto ATC Advisory sends advisory messages when you are flying through unstaffed areas. If you’re squawking your assigned beacon code, you might receive an advisory message such as:

  1. Descent Advisories: e.g., “Descend and maintain 11,000. The Providence altimeter 29.92.”
  2. Crossing Restrictions: e.g., “Cross CCC at and maintain 12,000 at 250 knots. The Kennedy altimeter 29.92.”
  3. Arrival Procedures: e.g., “Descend via the JFUND2 arrival. The Boston altimeter 29.92.”

Why Auto ATC Advisory?

For Pilots: Adds engagement to flights in unstaffed airspace, and helps ensure timely descents. For ATC: Helps ensure aircraft arrive in controlled airspace at appropriate altitudes and speeds, easing controller workload.

Where is it Available?

The beacon code assignments are live for all IFR aircraft departing the US. The Auto ATC Advisory trial is live in ZAB, ZBW, ZJX, ZME, ZOA, and ZTL ARTCCs, and will soon expand to ZDV, ZMP, and ZNY. The Auto ATC capability is included in the vNAS architecture, hence why it’s limited to the US.

Important Notes :
While Auto ATC messages are designed to assist controllers, it is ultimately up to pilots to choose whether to follow them, as the system does not provide separation services.

We’re excited to see how Auto ATC enhances your flying experience. If you have received an Auto ATC Advisory message, please share your feedback via the link in the advisory message as we continue to improve this feature.

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So this is the way the world goes. Automated ATC systems like those available via the sim software which everyone is supposed to switch off. This seems to point out that Vatsim’s excellent live ATC just isn’t working. What a slap in the face for all our ATC members who have studied hard (unlike their pilot counterparts) to make Vatsim great.

And pilots can decide to ignore it. Wonderful. Just what aviation needs is a cohort of wannabees who are allowed to ignore ATC if they wish.

Caused by a critical shortage of live ATC, which in turn is caused by the decision of the BoG to go for quantity of membership over quality. Bigger is better, right? Wrong.

Caused by a disastrously misguided decision to partner with a megalomaniac international business more interested in making money than in helping simmers to learn.

I worry about the future of Vatsim as a serious contributor to RW aviation education.

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What’s next? AI air traffic controllers replacing real people entirely so all FIRs can be staffed? We don’t need AI atc. It’s the whole reason why we’re using VATSIM, so we can have a realistic experience by talking to real people. You just can’t get that with AI. I’d rather fly offline than have AI atc “helping” me.

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where did you get that from? O.o

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I was referring to the “partnership” with Microsoft.

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I’m so sad to hear this perspective.

I’ll mention a few things.

The traffic levels on the network have absolutely blossomed, perhaps you could say exploded, since the one-two punch of the release of MSFS and COVID. I’m disappointed to hear you think that there was any decision by anyone to favor quantity over quality. Quite the opposite. We have been pushing a balance – trying to find a sweet spot – for many years, and recognize that for a long time we have been out of balance but are developing and employing methods to help get back to the right balance. Things like raising the bar with new member orientation. Changing the Code of Conduct to emphasize bare minimums that pilots absolutely must get right. Pilot training referrals when pilots don’t seem to have a clue. Clarifying multiple ways ATC can shed workload if they are getting too busy to handle traffic levels by themselves. There are many more in development focused on pilot training, including enhanced education and prevention of clueless pilots from getting on the network in the first place, or being able to get back on the network if they have already proven themselves unable to meet our foundational requirements and are unwilling to get the needed training to get up to a minimum level of proficiency. All of these are late to the need and slower to roll out than have been hoped, but are very much hot topics for network leadership. So, no, there is (nor has there been) any preference for quantity over quality. I think everyone in the community had been surprised at how quickly our numbers had shot up and we are still trying to get back to a good balance.

This trial IS NOT to replace human ATC. It’s an attempt to help lighten ATC workload by reducing the time and effort to identify aircraft that “cold call” ATC (squawk code assignments) and by not having so many people who didn’t know when to descend suddenly show up, call ATC, not be in the right place at the right altitude, and then causing an undue increase in workload.

Here’s an example: No Center controller online. A nice steady stream of traffic inbound to a busy Class B airport. Approach controller is online and suddenly in addition to the inbounds, because good human ATC is online, now there are a bunch of departures. While juggling this, 2 aircraft show up on a STAR many thousands of feet high. It happens all day long. While it’s not going to solve all of the world’s problems, it’s a trial of another tool that can be used to help a controller not go down the tubes.

Is it perfect? No.

Do notifications happen too far away from TOD? Maybe - I’m just hearing about that now and that needs to be investigated.

Are the developers considering how to implement an “opt out” for those pilots who don’t need these advisories? Yes.

Are following these advisories mandatory? No. It’s not ATC, therefore it’s not Control. Call it an advisory. Call it an attempt at a helpful suggestion. Call it what you want, but it’s certainly not intended to REPLACE ATC at all, it’s intended to see if we can reduce the amount of ATC getting screwed over, perhaps keep them happier and less burnt out, and maybe even educate a few pilots at the same time.

Is there a link provided with the notifications to provide feedback so we can see if these tools are worth improving or keeping at all? Yes.

Are we trying to make things better? Yes.

It’s a trial. We will learn from it. We will, through folks’ feedback, learn the good, bad, ugly, and whether it’s a concept that can be refined and improved, or if it’s not worth it.

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Though I think this may be exactly the point of contention: these advisory instructions/messages appear to be sent regardless of whether someone is actually online in a downstream sector or not - if nobody is online, how are they helping with ATC workload? And if the first 5 or so aircraft after you come online are too high or have given themselves an awkward direct, then that should be not the biggest of issues and everyone after that will get these messages and should then hopefully fly an appropriate route/profile (and if that’s too much, then frankly, there may be too much going on to open APP without having ACC online for presequencing and the controller should either switch to a more workable position, e.g. TWR, or remain offline for the time being).
We have had a similar option available for most of our APP sectors for quite a few months now here in EDGG (and I believe LSAS also has something similar), with the major difference being that these messages are simply aliases that a controller manually sends to pilots - we have not heard any complaints about this yet except the odd pilot saying they were unable to meet the descend restriction given in the message because the controller had sent it too late - so I am very much in favor of such an automated system to inform pilots of certain relevant LoA elements that may not be clear from the charts but are important for controllers, but very much think it should be confined to situations where affected downstream sectors are currently staffed.

To be honest, the further away from the top of descent, the better, but with a specific point at which the level should be reached (whether that be a specific waypoint, a certain distance from a specific waypoint, crossing a certain radial from a nearby VOR, etc.) - that way, pilots can plan their descend based on their actual aircraft performance and/or what kind of descent rates they feel comfortable with. A plain “descent to x” without any further context just seems very odd and doesn’t leave any room for the pilots to make useful decisions.

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It’s helpful even when no downstream ATC is online in a couple different ways: One, it helps the pilot because they are getting an adivisory about when they should be descending. (Whether or not there is downstream ATC online doesn’t change when they should be descending.) Two, consider the fact that downstream ATC may come online after you get the advisory message.

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I’d like to congratulate the Board, and ask that members contemplate where we have been and where we are perhaps going.

VATSIM, in my opinion, was stagnant for many years. Nothing really changed, to a point I felt what is going on with this place there is no future.

Today the Board is open to trials and testing of various ideas. For me that is a win in itself. Just because things are tested or trialled doesn’t mean they will be acceptable. We used to have text only, then poor voice, now voice that is modern day.

I think we should encourage trialling and testing of different things, AND THEN offer our feedback at the conclusion.

We are all entitled to a comment, but if the world stopped any development because there was an objector we would still be with Fred and Wilma. Some of the Supervisor attitudes I agree don’t meet the common belief, and I’d hope that dictorial people curb their enthusiasm because even if you can get the horse to water you haven’t achieved your aim.

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Frankly, this is a basic aviation skill. If a pilot needs a message by AUTO_ATC to know when a good time to start the descend would be, then maybe they are not ready for VATSIM yet.

Sure, but in my experience controlling one of the busiest airspaces on the network, the odd pilot with an egregiously wrong routing/descent profile at the beginning of the session are rarely a problem - we (and I assume the same goes for controllers in any other vACC that experiences regular high traffic) are obviously taught strategies for easing oneself into a session and slowly increase the workload over a couple of minutes until actually taking full control of the sector, so especially when beginning a session there is usually more than enough capacity to deal with stuff like this. The problem is more so when pilots continuously enter one’s airspace on the wrong route or an incorrect level throughout a busy session, hence why I think only sending these messages if an affected downstream sector is actually online would be a suitable compromise between annoying (at least some) pilots with constant AUTO_ATC messages while still retaining the bulk of the workload relief such a system can provide, not to mention that this way it may be easier to make following these advisories mandatory (within reason, of course) at some point if need be and that it could also serve to alert pilots that they will soon-ish enter an online controller’s airspace.

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Partially I agree, but sometimes ARTCCs have special LOAs and level crossing which are not listed anywhere publicly for normal pilots so there’s really no way how pilot could know that he’s supposed to be at this level at this waypoint, AUTO_ATC will advise you to descend to meet this LOA so next ATC can pick you up at correct altitude like if there was human controller.

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Not always. Sometimes the descents are uncharted, meant to comply with an LoA.

That’s an opinion that isn’t shared by a good number of controllers we talked to while planning this feature. Also, just because there are strategies to deal with pilots entering your airspace at the wrong altitude doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek additional ways to mitigate the issue.

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One thing I wish Auto ATC did do was remind pilots of their origin and destination CTAF if there’s no ATC online.

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But at that point you can give a crossing restriction and let the pilot figure it out themselves. Plain “descend x” descent advisories are absolutely useless in that regard because they don’t inform pilots when they are expected to be at that level and someone descending at 500fpm will obviously reach the level much later than someone flying the same speed but descending at 2500fpm (and the former may still end up way too high on profile while the latter may be flying at a low level for an unnecessarily long time).

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How are these messages exactly phrased? Is it absolutely clear that this is advisory? Can you please give some actual examples?

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Right, and that’s fully possible with Auto ATC.

Sure, and that’s the case when ATC is online as well. Granted, when ATC is online, they can notice the slow descender and issue an expedite instruction. But that fact doesn’t make the automatic instruction “absolutely useless”. I.e. the fact that some pilots will descend too slowly doesn’t render the entire system useless for everyone.

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Unfortunately it is not. They look like actual ATC clearances, you can see examples in the announcement post.

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I have not received them yet myself as I haven’t flown in the trial area but according to someone in our subdivision the first message sent out by auto atc before you receive the other instructions makes it really clear that it is only advisory (they even called it “excessively clear”)

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My point is: if you need pilots to be at a certain level when crossing a certain point in space, you can give a crossing restriction and let pilots figure out the descent for themselves, but if it’s fine to give “descend x” without any further context, then it can’t be important for the pilot to be at a certain level at a certain point during their flight in which case the advisory is absolutely useless because pilots may still enter the sector at an incorrect level if they descend too slowly (or if you want to look at it from a pilot’s perspective, then it’s absolutely unnecessary for the same reason).

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I think I understand what you’re saying, I just don’t agree that it’s useless, just because some pilots will descend too slowly.