Hi there,
Had my first experience of using 'OLIVIA', the french notam and flight planning system. Wow!!
What an amazing system. As well as the above you can also access wx and save your route details online. It is extremely easy to use and takes no time at all! What's more it's available in English.
Why do we have nothing like this in the UK? Our equivilents are a shoddy notam system which is as straight-forward as a hair-pin bend, flight plans you have to fill in by hand and fax, and albeit very good, the met office aviation site which is again separate from the other stages of the flight planning.
Once you have checked the wx, entered your route and waypoints, got the notams for the _relevant_ parts of the journey, you can then file the flight plan on the same site without have to touch a pen or own a fax machine.
Here's to hoping we get something so easy to use that actually makes sense over here soon. Well done to the guys behind OLIVIA.
www.sia.aviation-civile.gouv.fr
Tri