What do military crews think about NOTAMs?
 

I am doing academic research on the NOTAM system and I would be very interested to know your thoughts and opinions as military pilots about it. What is it that you dislike about the current system? What is it that you find difficult to work with? I would assume that your answers depend a lot on the type you are flying and your operational role. How is your perception of the system different than that of your civilian colleagues? Is it typical for you in the military to read through the NOTAMs yourselves or would you have other officers doing most of that work for you?

Any feedback would be incredibly useful for my research. I am studying several different groups of users but it is difficult to understand the needs of each group.

One method is to have a flight planning section manned by a senior air craftsman or corporal who will filter the NOTAMs for his unit's mission. These will usually be plotted on a display board enabling a quick overview by a crew. They can then read the relevant details. Those for further afield will not be plotted but grouped by country or area.

For units not using a central briefing facility the local NOTAMs will be forwarded; for overseas flights they will be forwarded on request.

Many of the examples cited by High Spirits do indeed clutter a brief. A crew planning a high transit will skip over low level notifications except perhaps close to destination. Unlit obstructions are indeed 'noise' but thankfully rarely do they bite you. Notable ones are wire strikes, typically cables across Norwegian fjords and tragically the EA6 cable strike in Italy.



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NOTAMs have a place for sure but relevance and depiction to assist crews is critical. Dissemination to multiple sites who then plot them gives rise to many opportunities for human error. Likewise a chart with pins in allows refinement of reading but then you have to plot each one anyway. Different categories are useful i.e. terminal versus en-route and maybe upper limit filtering. Technology now exists to centrally depict for all to view, an example being CADS that has to be used for most flight planning deconfliction anyway; likewise import to mission planners. This coupled with user tailorable relevance filters has the potential to make life easier and it is more efficient to plot once and view rather than many times over plotting. At the time I left the military there seemed a reluctance to centrally plot and depict, I know not why.

Gliding NOTAMs
 

Its curious how fixated everyone is about issuing NOTAMs for gliding comps whilst ignoring the fact that on a typical good gliding day in the UK, especially at the weekend, there are probably more gliders flying XC than would have entered the comp to which the NOTAM relates.

I suppose that they are the equivalent of a Health and Safety warning.... don't issue one and its your fault if something happens: issue one and it is the fault of the aircraft crew.

Why do we still call them NOTAMs?
 

In my futuristic novel "Flight of the Seawind", I call them NOTAPs, Notices to Air Personnel.
My feedback on the name has been favourable, even encouraging.
Am I the only one who realises that we have women in Aviation?

Slight thread drift to plug your novel!!!
I'm pretty sure that everyone in aviation and this forum is aware that there are women in it.
Not so the general population perhaps, but then people who are not aware there are women pilots/aircrew/engineers are likely to be ignorant of many things.

Never read them - they were addressed to airmen and I was a hosifer

Are you the army air corps major, who, when asked if he had flown the Gazelle he arrived in, said "Certainly not, I have a competent NCO to do that for me...."

I really see that most of the issues I have identified in my research with civilians also apply directly to the military. Sometimes the existence of several different users is used as an argument against making any changes. We say oh this and that needs to be changed and then authorities come back counter arguing that "oh it is complex" and "so many different users are affected, have you thought of the impact?". At the end of the day I see that we really need a new operational concept to clear up this 100 year old mess. Thank you all very much for your feedback and time, I really appreciate it and I will do my best to integrate your feedback on my research.

When I worked in the UK Notam Office, many years ago, nearly all Nav Warning Notam were written by serving or ex military officers.

I can believe that the UKNO issued the Notams and the officers wrote them in the approved format, but surely they would have been written as a request by an originator, say the organiser of a major exercise.

Can you expand on your experience?

NOTAMs
 

Never read 'em, still don't.