Your points are very salient and intuitively I agree. I am going to put two views; that is not to say I necessarily agree with either.
View 1 The NOTAM service which is provided by AIS under the terms of the ICAO is actually a promulgation service to the originators of the information and not to the pilot; the pilot is under legal obligation to make himself/herself aware of the latest information regarding the flight prior to take off; in the UK the ANO is the law which prescribes this. This is not a popular view, but valid nonetheless.
View 2 This is the pragmatic school of thought which holds that if you don’t make something easy then nobody will do it. This is true and we are all human. It is for this reason that there has been much negotiation with AIS/NATS and the CAA and in the future it is hoped that steps may be made to enable better use of well-known products like NotamPlot and NotamPro to make it very east and intuitive to get there PIB information.
If the latter of these two is possible then pilots will both discharge their responsibilities under the ANO and find is easy and intuitive to do so.
We are small fish in a big aviation pond and the AES (web front end to the ADIMS tool provided by NATS/AIS) is a one size fits all database and web interface. What might be irrelevant to us GA folk might be very relevant when viewed by another area of the industry.
Lastly to answer your second question, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that even though an airfield is open the operator or their agent can withdraw permission for it’s use because they own the land. Hence the PPR and in the case you mention the airfield did not grant the prior permission that was required for whatever reason; in this case it was staff manning levels. Someone will correct me if that is wrong but I believe that to be correct.
Hope this helps.
Regards
Andy
Last edited by Andrew Sinclair; 4th Jul 2003 at 17:08.