NIS is upgrading..........Oh really!
 

Well implemented.............really well implemented.

For all those trying to access weather, notams and submit a flight plan early this morning..........what an exercise in futility. Thank you Airservices for re-enforcing my opinion of your quality and Industry usefulness.

Ever considered sub-contracting out this service to an organisation that knows what it's doing!!!

If you were an "App" - you wouldn't get a rating!:ugh:

Well, I logged on to the AsA website this morning, went to Pilot Briefing for an SPFIB Update, got the screen that said NIS had been delayed, so I thought oh well, used the "old" system and that was that.

I also note that NFW is still working.

So what's the problem? :confused:

Command Flight Planner
 

In case anyone is still struggling in Command Flight Planner (after assuming AsA got it right and switching) there are some instructions for switching back to the old NAIPS interface accessible from the front page of the Command Software Web site.

I share Bevan's concerns about the compressed time frame for the flight plan changes. I have it coded, customers can update their aircraft profiles in preparation, and I expect it to work but I don't have the degree of confidence I'd like.

I won't be surprised if the two change events merge into one on 11 Nov but there's been no word yet. The global go live date for the new FPL is 15 Nov, so there is little wiggle room without being exposed to international problems.

I imagine there may have been a time where the roll back to the old system had not yet been completed, so you couldn't use that, nor the new one.

While not an excuse, these backend systems are VERY old.

Just for a laugh: when "new NAIPS" comes online, you will be able to submit flight plans many days in advance. Although I can't remember the number, ICAO set a minimum and many ANSPs around the world have decided to only support the minimum because of storage concerns. (NOT AsA, they are allowing more!)

Yes, good chance some of them are running these systems on ancient mainframes or mini computers with storage measured in megabytes.

If it ain't broken, don't upgrade it it, I guess. :)

Current AIP ENR 1.10-16 AIP Time of Departure; Requirements states:

“ETSs more than 7 days in advance at the time of notification cannot be accepted”

Yes sports fans, you can submit now up to 7 days in advance and have been able to do so for years.

ICAO doc. 4444 amendment 1 ICAO 4444 amd 1 says "4.4.2.1.1 Flight plans shall not be submitted more than 120 hours before the estimated off-block
time of a flight."

That AIP reference seems to be in regards to filling out the paper form somehow sending that to them, but can you direct into NAIPS? I entered ETD as 291500, and this was the response:

Now which 1500 is that? Unless it is truncating the "29" in output only, did it accept it for today, not tomorrow?

As a side note: it seems NAIPS has stopped accepting any registrations that are not 3 letters. ("4467" resulted in "registration not known") Better 'ava word...

And as an anecdote: I do recall hearing an exchange between an aircraft and Parafield ground regarding a flight plan that could not be found. It had been submitted to NAIPS more than 24 hours ago...

I have them too......

Usually because I have the date for tomorrow :ouch:

I remember the debacle of the original NAIPS introduction. I guess the old rumour that NAIPS stands for Not Actually Intended to Provide a Service may have been true after all.

What you see in response to lodgement is the FPL message matching your flight. The current FPL message format, which is what is passed on to other ANSPs if you fly international, has no provision for plans in advance of 24 hours. It simply cannot show the date. I guess that AsA currently store the message until it is within the 24-hour window before injecting it into their live processing. BTW, The "new" NAIPS displays the same message and emails you a copy.

The new FPL message has provision for a date-of-flight that uses an Item 18 DOF/ tag in the submitted plan to indicate the date in combo with the existing ETD (renamed estimated off-blocks time EOBT). A sample message will look like:
(I am not an expert, that is just the info AsA provided.)
AsA still have to implement a store-and-forward system because some parties (e.g. the FAA) have decided they still will not accept plans in advance of 24 hours.

Spot on ChrisW67 :ok:

Baswell,

Both the Pilot Briefing Service and NAIPS for Windows will allow you to enter 6 digit ETD in the format DDHHMM and have done so for quite a few years.

NAIPS will assume that the next instance of that DDHHMM is what you intend as the ETD and will assign a YY and MM to it to form a full 10 digit DTG for your ETD.

If you don’t include the DD in the ETD, NAIPS will also assign that as part of the process. So, if you submit a HHMM that is say 15 mins in the future, NAIPS will see that and distribute immediately. Additionally, if you submit a flight plan with an ETD that is LESS THAN 15 in the past, e.g. ETD for a time say 10 mins ago, NAIPS will immediately send that on.

However, if your ETD is GREATER than 21 hours in the future, NAIPS will store that flight plan internally and send it out to the relevant ATC systems when the ETD is LESS THAN OR EQUAL to 21 hrs. This is because the way that ATC systems process flight plan data.

One of the problems with this assumption of dates is that if the submitter sends in an ETD greater than 15 mins in the past ignorant of the current time, NAIPS will assume that the next instance of that time (i.e. tomorrow’s date but same time) and hang onto it……..and if that “next day” involves end of month and end of year dates, the error is magnified.

The acceptance message you see and have provided for NOSEND, is the actual message that is sent out over the AFTN that may go internationally as well as domestically. (AFTN Wiki)

This is a world wide format defined by ICAO and you correctly note that the ETD is only HHMM in that message; because ICAO says so!

With ICAO 2012 flight plan changes ICAO is redefining the flight plan and including a range of new equipment items and is also changing the ETD to DOF and EOBT.

ETD will be no more as it will become Estimate Off Blocks Time (EOBT) and the flight plan may include a date field called Date of Flight (DOF). From what I see of NIS, the date field has already been included in the system.

On your question of 3 letter rego….”ABC” is not your aircraft rego…..”VHABC” is. When you submit details, NAIPS does quick check of rego against type with information sourced from the avcharges section and will present advice if it does not marry up. Hit the submit button again to force through the plan.

That's only an issue if you include a day, in which case a month should be added. In any other case, tomorrow is tomorrow - month or year boundaries have no effect. Unless, of course, this function is implemented by a heroic programmer who thinks they can come up with this themselves; lazy programmers like me just do "dateObject.add(Calendar.DAY, 1)".

The new API requires us to send a full, valid date string, not DTG. (e.g.: '2012-10-29T10:43:00.000') Since we still want to accept DTG in NAIPS for iPhone, that means we have to parse this and take care of this roll-over handling ourselves.

We get to have another go on Thursday morning! Yay!

:bored:

Looking forward to a "new feel" at an 0415 preflight prep... :}

Happy happy joy joy! ;)

I can't find the NOTAM anywhere, has it been withdrawn? I have noticed a lot of weird things happening while using NAIPS over the last couple of days. For example, NOTAMs showing up on a location briefing, but not a SPFIB for the same aerodrome.

NAIPS Location Brief for YMMM and change the default period to 50 hrs (default is 24 and it can go out to 240.

SPFIB is the same, default is 24hrs but can go out to 240 if you tell it to.

AIS/MET system does not filter on time.

Well, "NIS" is live.

But for now it seems they forgot one tiny little detail. Their firewall is rejecting calls to the URLs our Apps need to be using. While they tried the roll-out on Saturday, I noticed this and warned them that still needed to be done. 5 days later...

So no AvPlan/NAIPS for iPhone/OzRunways access until they wake up and find someone to fix it.

Our contacts are not answering their phones, if anyone knows a contact for Margaret Staib, feel free to let her know your displeasure. :)

The same lack of access, and lack of ability to do anything about it from this end, applies to Command Flight Planner as well.