time between checking notam's and vfr flight.
 

Its not always possible to check notam's at the flying club, immediately prior to flying, so I always check the night before at work via the ais web site.

Is this acceptable? If not, what is a reasonable time period from checking to flying. Many thanks in advance.

Checking the night before is a helluva lot better than what many people do - which is nothing.

You do occasionally get "pop-up" NOTAMs for things like police investigations that happen suddenly - Soham springs to mind from a few years ago, for example.

You would be incredibly unlucky to get caught out by one of these, and if you were prosecuted then I would expect you could use the fact that you checked the NOTAMs the night before as mitigation.

It's worth noting that the AIS site does make it easy to do a quick update on a NOTAM check. Simply find the NOTAM check that you did last night, select it and click "Update". That will exclude all the NOTAMs you've already seen, and will probably result in a message to the effect that there's nothing there - in other words, no NOTAMs have popped up overnight. You could do this before you leave the house and it would take about 2 minutes.

The answer is that there is no cutoff time for notam data! It can be added at any time.

In pre-Internet days, bulletins were sent out by post twice a week. It was assumed, I think, that anything from the last couple of days would be picked up by ATS units and passed on by RT.

There's an argument that the reasonable time period is now shorter just because it can be. But IMHO a few hours is quite reasonable. There's also an argument for talking to a relevant ATS unit!

Don't have it to hand now but there is a relevant figure published.

Basically ATS are expected to tell you of NOTAM/Sigmets/Warnings which are issued after a certain time prior to your departure (it could be as little as 30 minutes). Before that time you are expected to have checked.

On a practical basis, in the end it will come down to you making a "reasonable" attempt to obtain a briefing. In these days of mobile telephones, you could get a brief before leaving the house and then ring AIS for an update prior to departure.

If you are departing from the absolute middle of nowhere then perhaps no recent briefing would reasonably be the best you could do (but you would have to prove that).

Airfields I think are required to have adequate facilities........your local farmers field won't have a FBU......this could be taken as having less than the required facilities and thus you could be asked whay you did not make appropriate arrangements (carrier pigeon :D ) before starting to operate from there.

Regards,

DFC

Not sure where you're from, but in the U.S. the preflight weather briefer will give you NOTAMs. And a weather briefing from the prior night just won't do. The object here is safety, not just avoiding getting busted. (not that you didn't already know that, though)

Cheers!

Yep, dont you just love 1-800-WX-BRIEF

More than just a just a weather briefing service and free as well ! I think our good old met office will weather brief you but for the princley sum of £17 !!!!!:}

Julian.

You can also call up FSS on the radio at any time. Always a good idea to ask about recent NOTAMS when activating a flight plan.

DFC

Do you actually fly aeroplanes?

Here in the UK, most airfields have a means of filing flight plans but most don't have public internet access. There is a way to do most things by phoning around but for a long flight one needs to get a narrow route briefing and that can be done only over the internet.

One cannot "prove" that something was not possible. The court could always say that in 2005 a pilot should carry a laptop with GPRS/G3. I am 100% sure that departing from the middle of nowhere would be no defence at all if you busted a notamed airshow.

The present system is OK for pilots that do "burger runs". Perhaps this is what most GA VFR pilots do?

In the UK....before I head to the airport. Which means about 3 hours before take off.

In the US, the last thing I do before heading to the plane is phone 1800WXBRIEF.......

I went flying last week from sherburn, In the morning one of the girls in our office had said there was a no fly zone over leeds, following the london bombings, I checked the notams and found nothing.

When I got to sherburn 1 hour later there was a sign on the door warning of the no fly zone.

If I had been flying from a private strip I would not have known and could have flown right through it, not sure of the results of that!

so even an hour can make all the difference, although I suspect some kind ATC may have put me wise, but not everyone has radio.

Sorry Chaps (and Chapesses), its probably a no win situation. As an aircraft commander, you are bound by the provisions of ANO Article 43, to "reasonably satisfy himself before the aircraft takes off.....that the flight can safely be made, taking into account the latest information available.....".

Part of the problem that I've encountered is that some airport operators change a procedure "WIE" (ie "with immediate effect"). This gives you no chance if you have recently got airborne.

While, to the letter of the law, you can probably argue that you have reasonably satisfied yourself, if its something that you have to rely on or use while en-route, you don't need a stroppy controller telling you that you've got it wrong.

While there is an established system (the AIRAC 28 day cycle) for promulgating major procedure changes, thereby permitting Aerad/Jeppeson etc time to change their charts, can the CAA not, for flight safety sake ban "WIE" procedure changes, unless they are warranted by an immediate flight safety need?

Thanks for the replies.

The ideal solution would be access to the ais web site immediately prior to flying, but unfortunately, internet access isn't available at the club, or at home.

I must say that the flying club is pretty good, posting relevant (local) notams in prominent places, and I reckon I'm aware of 99 % of potential prolems before flying. II'd rather have 100%.

Its an interesting paradox.

The more information that is available and the faster it can be accessed, the more we are bound by it.

Anyone that has been without a mobile phone recently, for just one day, will know what I mean.

I read them the night before.

I know its a fact that many clubs/pilots do not have internet access? C'mon... when one considers the cost against the other costs involved in aviation it is amazing this is still the case... particularly with the incessant trend towards on-line data disemination? (a basic PC can be bought for less than the cost of a GPS and broadband access for 50p a day)

It's pretty obvious to me, commit aviation and you're entering an exciting, but dangerous world where ignorance is no excuse. If you are required to check data before flight the sooner you do so, and the more comprehensive your search, the safer that information will be... the longer you leave it, the greater the chance of paying the price.

(...and don't rely on the ATSU to update you. They probably will, (duty of care etc) but this will be subject to workload and having sufficient knowledge of your flight profile and intentions and does not absolve you of any responsibility.)

I suspect Yorks.PPL's post above contains the commonsense answer.

His reference to the non-appearance (in the NOTAMs) of the TRA over Leeds last week is absolutely correct, I found the same problem. However, he's also correct in that Leeds Radar/Approach would have told him instantly if he'd checked in with them - in fact they were doing that for a lot of people.

His final comment regarding those who fly non-radio is interesting : I don't want to reopen that can of worms, but if someone who is non-radio busts (say) a pop-up TRA which hasn't been NOTAMed, is he culpable (provided he operates in the open FIR etc) ?

FF :ok:

TCAS Fan quotes...
So I would suggest therefore a non-radio equipped aircraft encountering a "pop-up" TRA would have a reasonable defence providing the pilot could prove (s)he had departed before the restriction came into force...

What does a TRA really provide though... a guarantee of protection? Not really, only a possible chance to prosecute any infringement after the event.

No-one's mentiond 0500 354802, a free service which gives you a recording of all of the mandatory restrictions (TRA's and temporary airspace upgrades). This is updated each day and will be updated during the day in the event of an emergency TRA. Note that it only contains info relevant to the current day.

And of course we do have a 24 hour a day free briefing service available on 020 8745 3450/3451. (OK so it's not a freephone call).


All the contact details are here.

Everything has to be paid for in some way or another, (the current official thinking being that the user pays). Given that we don't pay for it I think what we have is rather good.

I'm not aware of any prosecutions where the defence tried to argue that the provisions of Art 43 were complied with.

If you check the night before, most of the "planned" activity that requires a NOTAM will have been posted. Anything else is likely to be short term and localised. If your departure aerodrome has a FIS or ATC service, they will be able to tell you about any pop up NOTAMs. If you flying from a farm strip or A/G then a call to the nearest FIS provider will give you an up date. Lack of internet access or mobile phone coverage shouldn't stop you from aviating.

Boomerangben

... true, but lack of knowledge of NOTAMs etc may well do!!!

By the way, thanks for "volunteering" the FIS units to give you information. Not saying they won't help, but I doubt they'd welcome your call because what you ask is much easier said than done... they'd need knowledge of your route (fairly intimate knowledge if it was outside the local area), your level and times. Having plotted all that information, they'd probably need to go onto the CAA Website to extract the latest warnings, glean out what was relevant before they'd be able to pass it onto you... or of course you could just do it yourself?