Narrative:

First major push of the morning and florida traffic was about 80% established; meaning at altitude and on their established routes. Thunderstorms in the atlantic had forced everyone on the inland routes (over chs) area so there was considerably more traffic on that route than normal. After several minutes at the sector; my supervisor told us that there are suddenly restrictions for mia; fll and mco; 15 miles in trail; regardless of altitude and orl aircraft had to be at FL340 and below. The restriction should have been in place prior earlier; so there was no opportunity to take preventative actions. What was a safe and orderly flow was now a very complex and quickly became an unsafe situation. Not only did I have to watch and sequence my flow but I had to watch and sequence the sector beneath me and merge our traffic. You want to talk about chaos! For every aircraft that you had to turn to get the mile in trail restriction; another aircraft was close behind at the same altitude who needed sequenced with someone else. Half were on your frequency and half were not. Every aircraft turned; now conflicted with someone else who a few minutes ago was not traffic. The last straw in all of this was trying to get the altitude restriction on the mco's. Most were aircraft were established at FL400. I had to not only turn them for the miles in trail restriction but also had to vector the aircraft to get below others at FL360 and FL340 who were not in my sectors altitude stratums. If you vectored to get the mco down then you screwed up everything else. I can't tell you how much time this has happened; working the established flow and all of a sudden there is a tmu restriction that complicates everything. The tmu should have given the restriction to ZDC tmu in a timelier manner. ZDC tmu should have rejected the restrictions or negotiated a later time to affect them. My supervisor did what he/she could do and off course we tried to comply; but the situation was still preventative and unnecessary!

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZDC Controller described a very busy/complex traffic period noting last minute enroute restrictions for multiple Florida airports; adding the TMU's at all involved facilities were late in implementing flow requirements.

Narrative: First major push of the morning and Florida traffic was about 80% established; meaning at altitude and on their established routes. Thunderstorms in the Atlantic had forced everyone on the inland routes (over CHS) area so there was considerably more traffic on that route than normal. After several minutes at the sector; my supervisor told us that there are suddenly restrictions for MIA; FLL and MCO; 15 miles in trail; regardless of altitude and ORL aircraft had to be at FL340 and below. The restriction should have been in place prior earlier; so there was no opportunity to take preventative actions. What was a safe and orderly flow was now a very complex and quickly became an UNSAFE situation. Not only did I have to watch and sequence my flow but I had to watch and sequence the sector beneath me and merge our traffic. You want to talk about chaos! For every aircraft that you had to turn to get the mile in trail restriction; another aircraft was close behind at the same altitude who needed sequenced with someone else. Half were on your frequency and half were not. Every aircraft turned; now conflicted with someone else who a few minutes ago was not traffic. The last straw in all of this was trying to get the altitude restriction on the MCO's. Most were aircraft were established at FL400. I had to not only turn them for the miles in trail restriction but also had to vector the aircraft to get below others at FL360 and FL340 who were not in my sectors altitude stratums. If you vectored to get the MCO down then you screwed up everything else. I can't tell you how much time this has happened; working the established flow and all of a sudden there is a TMU restriction that complicates everything. The TMU should have given the restriction to ZDC TMU in a timelier manner. ZDC TMU should have rejected the restrictions or negotiated a later time to affect them. My supervisor did what he/she could do and off course we tried to comply; but the situation was still preventative and unnecessary!

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 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.