NOTAMS and why they need to be checked....
 

We recently held an aerobatic competition at the airfield, which was NOTAM'd from the surface up to 4000' AGL with a radius of 4NM.

I was astonished by the number of aircraft which called up on frequency (for joining info) without the faintest clue, and others who's commanders clearly hadn't bothered to check the NOTAMs wanting to fly through the o/head at 2000', or close enough to be a hazard to those participating in the aerobatics event.

Even worse, was the number of student pilots (some on solo navex's) from local airfields who called up 'inbound', again blissfully unaware of the competition. As an instructor myself, I make it my business to check that my students have read AND understood the NOTAM's and also check them myself. After all, we are supposed to be 'supervising' the student.

Lastly, we also had the potentially disatrous situation of aircraft flying through 'the box' whilst aeros were in progress that hadn't even bothered to call up on the airfield frequency...:eek:

Software utilities like Notam Plot (and others) mean there really is no excuse for this kind of sloppiness. Why can't people act with a care to others and exercise more responsibility I ask?

Bit""&ng on here is probably preaching to the converted.

It is worth trying to be pro-active.

So, this was an opportunity to establish which school they were with and which instructor. I would make a call to their CFI. Both the student and the school might "learn" a very worth while lesson. Isnt that the object of airfields "mentoring" students.

Train the student properly and you will end up with a better pilot.

We had the Dutch Open last weekend and as far as I knew nobody flew through the NOTAMed SRZ (which included the holding and box, obviously)

It helped that this SRZ was located into another, permanent SRZ which is almost completely contained in class A starting at 1500' and up (so no en-route traffic possible, only traffic climbing up from underneath), and that Lelystad Radio always mentioned "aerobatics active" to everyone who asked for airfield information. Also Lelystad has no overhead joins but a specific, mandatory joining procedure located on the opposite side from where we did the competition.

There were a few banner towing aircraft who used "our" frequency (which was in the NOTAM as well) to coordinate their towing and general chitchat. Fortunately they found another frequency after a polite request.

So great weekend, great weather, no incidents (and I came in 1st in the Beginners class:ok:).

(Oh, and before anyone starts to make smart remarks about aerobatics on an IFR flightplan: The permanent SRZ is carved out of class A airspace which effectively becomes class G airspace in favourable weather conditions. It is there to allow aerobatics, stall practice and a few other things for which you need more than 1500' in altitude, roughly above the busiest GA airfield in the Netherlands.)

At least the other pilots bothered to put a radio call in and check.
I hope they were spoken to politely.
As far as I am concerned interpreting NOTAMs in their current impenetrable state is tedious and prone to error - the problem is with the system - I cannot help but sympathise with people caught out by events such as yours.

I check them on long flights but locally rely on radio contact, a knowledge of where the red arrows are going to be and ATC to steer me clear. When I file IFR I glance at them but they are definitely not user friendly enough.

We need legible graphical relevant NOTAM presentation - the current presentation is not acceptable in any of the available formats,

SB

Quite right, whenever they sort out their crap system things will improve.

I half agree
 

Nope, but I would say that if you're getting 50 pages of NOTAMs that you're doing something wrong. There has been various guides on how to get the most out of the NOTAM system, in particular how to use the Narrow Route Briefing. Anything else is going to produce far too many notams.

The only reason I would put EGTT into the notam system, is the unlikely event that I was passing through EGTT FIR, but didn't have waypoints located in that FIR....very unlikely for me.

If you are struggling with the UK CAA version, the French version (in English!) is slightly more user friendly:

http://www.sia.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/default_uk.htm

Click on NOTAM, Narrow Route on the lhs. It takes it's feed from the same database so you are effectively receiving the same info.


HTH

Glush,

With the greatest respect and sympathy I feel it rather unfair for you to jump to the conclusion (like so many instructors are want to do) that a solo x-country student was not properly briefed. As a fellow instructor I have known a capable student pilot make the silliest of errors, or perhaps forget a detail from a NOTAM check, thus making what might appear from an outsiders point of view to be a rather alarming mistake. Brief all you like but the student will still make a mistake - it's part and parcel of learning.

PPR is required at Conington (I assume this is the airfield to which you refer) therefore I find it hard to believe that a supervising instructor would not only forget to check their student had obtained the relevant NOTAMS but also forget to call the airfield if that was the destination?!

VFE.

VFE

You'd be amazed by how many QXC students turn up at airfields with very little input from their Instructors. No NOTAMs? I've seen no lines on a chart, no fuel, no PPR, no idea that sunset is imminent, etc. It's apparent that some students are "briefed" days/weeks in advance and told "next time the weather's good, just turn up and go".

Care to name and shame the flying schools concerned?

Have you ever reported it via the usual anonymous channels?

VFE.

Why can't the way the notams are displayed be changed.
Say a map, a bit like google earth, with flags of the current days notams.
Much easier to find out if a particular notam effects your flight and its position.

Some of these obscure kite flying and balloons take some finding.

If flagged, click on, then opens up to give more details.

Also the free phone number, why can't it first give all the event locations first briefly, then the detail, so that i don't have to listen to a load of info that doesn't effect me.

Ain't you lot ever heard of NotamPlot? It makes checking UK notams the work of seconds, and it's free. fly.dsc and ukga have similar facilities, which are also free.

I appreciate that the current notam system is the way it is in order to ensure a uniform interface worldwide, but that doesn't stop it sucking to high heaven! It's what we in the IT sector would describe as a "legacy system". A load of old crap which doesn't improve because the relevant stakeholders can't/won't sit round a table long enough to do something about it.

Rather predictably...
 

Well PP, if you put a post like that up you shouldn't be surprised.

The system may be cumbersome but that's the way of ICAO and until xnotam is adopted by ICAO we are stuck with it. About 3 pages is the norm. If you go for a Route Brief rather than a Narrow Route Brief and stick in a FIR you will get NOTAM for the whole of that FIR.

The freephone number gives you what it says on the tin. RA(T) and airspace upgrades, i.e. the mandatory stuff. It won't give you nav warnings or tell you that the taxiway at Little Snoring is out of service.

In the context of the original post here it will almost certainly have been a Nav Warning, which infers no prohibition on entry other than that which would apply to the ATZ under Rule 45.

glush's astonishment at the breaches of Art 52 of the ANO by the commander is however quite understandable.

I do wonder about this subject myself I know a few pilots that just never bother to check notams and don't bad an eyelid in saying so, I have only had my pilots licence 3 years but and feel privileged to have it, but I do wonder if stds are dropping like most things seem to be in modern day life,

Or are the schools dumbing down????

NJA.

Wtf ?!?!?
 

Mike

I know we have been here before but I think these threads reflect peoples frustration with a system that goes back to the dawn of tele printers.

Yeah, sure the system works, and it may well be the best we have within ICAO standards, but that doesnt mean its the best system we could have.

People wish for something better, more user friendly, and given the advances in the way we can use and manipulate data, that does not seem unreasonable.

The EASA intiative you mention looks to be a good one. Its a shame that once we were world leaders in so many fields, today we seem happier to let others do the innovation.

No, it's not but would people be willing to PAY for a better system?

I know that I would not. The present system works well enough if you are willing to take a little amount of time to understand how to get the best from it.

For a change I dont think cost is a significant factor.

The issues stem from the problems assiciated with interpolating the existing data. The format we have was developed I suspect long before there was any possibility of automatically plotting the information graphically which results in the known issues with plotting the data graphically.

I think what most people want is a reliable way of displaying NOTAMS on a map which they can print and take with them. If that process took all of 5 minutes and they could super impose their PLOG on their map I suspect many more would include this as part of their pre-flight.

Here is a thought - with the growth in glass - how about being able to download NOTAMS to a usb, plug this into your G1000 or Avidyne and have an instant graphical display of the days NOTAMs. :)

I do!

I don't have either.


If you are going to change the system we have, it will cost money and I really do not want to pay for something I get for free at the moment. The present system works plenty well enough.

Jodelman

Given NATS have an obligation to provide NOTAMS free of charge at the moment how do you think you currently pay?

If EASA / ICAO mandates the promulgation of NOTAMS in a format more adaptable to "modern" communications why do you think you will be expected to pay for those changes any more / less than you do at the moment.

I am just wondering whether we are at cross purposes.

Up loading to glass was not linked to the first part of my reply other than as a musing that it would be a nice option if Garmin or Avidyne were to include this facility.

PP

1. The AIS site being a bit impenetrable ?

Agreed. I've been sent a draft of the new user guide and have provided my comments back to AIS.

2. With a small amount of software development the whole site could be much easier to use ?

I suspect you are confusing the data with the software that is used to present it. The content and format of the data is laid down in Annex 15 of the Chicago convention. UK AIS cannot change it. The format is not designed for anything other than a textual presentation. It would in any case be courting disaster to provide anything other than the originator's text (i.e. to change wot he wrote). If you have a good idea please share it with us. I'll be happy to put you in touch with the right people and, with my AOPA hat on to support you if you have something workable.

3. Not having NOTAMs arrive as black text on white background, but with some sort of colour key would help ?

Colour key is a possibility. How would you envisage it working? It's when you get to the nitty gritty that it gets tricky, particularly when you try to cater for briefings stuck on the wall having been printed on a mono laser. The market is of course entirely open to commercial providers to deliver alternative presentations if they want to. The fact that there is no stampede to do so perhaps indicates something.

4. The "golden ones" immediately coming out to criticise ?

You flatter me.

5. Or the bit I was being facetious and mentioned 50 pages of NOTAMs ?!

If you're going to be facetious I do wish you'd warn me. I'm a bear of very little brain. As I said 3 pages is about the norm. Anyone wading through 50 pages has done something badly wrong.


Calling me sunshine doesn't help. I think we had all of 10 seconds of it in Pompey this afternoon.

Mike

I'm still only a student just starting XC work but have already learnt to use NOTAM Check it's not free like some of the others mentioned above (it is very cheap) but it certainly works. All you do is paste the AIS NOTAM list into a window in NOTAM Check and it plots them onto a map for you. Then if you see any where you want to go, you click on them and it shows you the text. Easy.

One of my instructors also demonstrated the need to also call the AIS number. We did a XC route one evening. I had checked the NOTAMS and all was clear but the AIS line told him about a BBMF Hurricane doing fly-pasts close to our route which was not in the NOTAM brief.

Well an idea
 

Not quite so simple.

http://www.eurocontrol.int/ead/publi...tam_index.html

Hmm interesting...
 

1) Yes 2)No

The European AIS Database evolved out of recognition that it was a tad daft for every Eurocontrol State to maintain its own NOTAM database. The EAD covers not only dynamic data (NOTAM) but also static data (IAIP, SRD, AIC).

Now instead of each State subscribing to AFTN feeds of all other States' NOTAM it's all done at Eurocontrol. The UK no longer has its own NOTAM database. The EAD is populated with UK NOTAM by UK AIS staff at Heathrow House on the Bath Road using EAD terminals.

AFIK there has never been a database containing solely UK NOTAM, it's always been worldwide.

WRT pulling it down each day that's not hugely clever as you'd always be working with out of date data. When you run a brief on the AIS site it's a live query on the EAD. Basically you're applying filters on the data and if something went into the database 5 minutes before you clicked the submit button you'll get it included in the result if it meets the filter criteria.

drauk I believe was pulling down data every 15 mins or every half hour. If you're interested in finding out more then Annex 15 to the Chicago Convention contains the data format.

ICAO Doc 8126 contains the encode/decode for the Q codes used in the Q line but I don't know of an online source for that document.

The filtering and display options currently available are limited by the data format, which is what xnotam is designed to address.

Mike

Thread drift!
 

The original post complained (quite rightly in my view) about pilots, including students, seeking to land at/overfly Conington during a notamed aerobatic competition when they had apparently no knowledge of the event.

So how hard was it on the two or three days of the competition to find this notam?

My own experience was that a narrow route search on the AIS site for an intended flight to Conington on 29 August showed the Notam as the SECOND ITEM on the search results - the Destination aerodrome info.

How hard is that to spot?

Admittedly, anyone seeking to transit or overfly the ATZ would have had to look a bit further down the search results, because their destination would not have been Conington, but for goodness' sake, a narrow route search would have shown a nav warning with the name "Peterborough Connington" in it, not just a series of lats and longs! That should have rung a bell for anyone who had bothered to plot their route on a chart!

However difficult some notams may be to decipher, and however irrelevant some may be (all those transponder code changes spring to mind) the point here is that a narrow route search of the AIS site (which takes a minute or so to input) would have yielded the information in readable form for anyone who took the trouble to read it.

So you can moan all you like about the inadequacies of the notam system in general (and I'd agree to a considerable extent) but it doesn't invalidate what the first poster was saying. People should not have turned up at Conington ignorant of the Notam. And sending students out on solo NAVEXs without apparently having checked Notams just doesn't bear thinking about. Sure, nobody fell out of the sky, but a student who is put into an unfamiliar situation suddenly has a lot more workload to cope with and can make errors as a result of inexperience. Usually good for the soul if nothing serious happens, but on occasion ....

Its taken me about 20 seconds to find the relevant notam from AIS:

Not rocket science at all :ok:

Fact is it is the instructors responsibility to satisfy himself you have properly briefed for the flight - guess whose neck it is when the stude passes through the Red Arrow display.

.. .. .. imho rightly so, you are a student through out the PPL course, it does no harm when sent out on your very first x-country(s) to be reminded of the planning components - if you have them all covered good on you, if you havent its another lesson learnt. If you fly through NOTAM'ed airspace shame on you, but more shame on your instuctor - unless you told him you had checked, but hadnt really!! :)

Emma - yep, I agree, the instructor should also be concerned if the student gets to the x-country and hasnt correctly prepared. Of course the instructor sending the student off on the x-country is usually one and the same that has done the training to date. I have heard at some clubs they get another instructor to supervise the x-country which isnt such a bad idea. It can give the student a different perspective on some of planning elements.

I think a part of the "notam problem" is that most of the UK GA scene is quite "old" in terms of pilot age, and doesn't have IT skills.

Somewhere around 90% of new PPLs chuck it in for good within a year or two, which leaves only a slow trickle of pilots who will hang in there entering the PPL scene each year. All the rest are much older "residents" who trained, I guess, on average, maybe 20 years ago.

And anybody who trained before c. 2002 will not have seen any notam website at all. In 2003 the ais.org.uk site was crap, missing off vital French power station TRAs which nearly got me busted by the frogs.

And most "older" pilots do not know how to use a PC, never mind the internet.

I do not wish to sound disrespectful to older pilots (I fly with many of them) but what we have here is a WW1/WW2 training scene which in its backwardness stops just short of handing out leather helmets and goggles on your first solo, while the powers to be have brought in a super duper modern bang up to date system for notams, whose ignorance is more or less guaranteed by the majority of currently active pilots because it requires bang up to date IT skills (called the "internet") to use.

To me, this is fair enough, and I have mobile internet so I can check notams anywhere, with a PDA, with a laptop, could even do it in Mongolia using a satellite phone, could even do it when airborne, but currently most UK airfields do not even have public internet access!

When I got my PPL in 2001 I had never been shown how to check notams. The Chief Flying Instructor (note the capital letters - I am showing due respect by writing it as the CAA due in their letters) would pin some local notam printout to the wall each morning, together with tafs/metars, and each instructor would give it a quick glance, and that was it. And I am a relatively recent recruit to flying...

The best thing the CAA could do it mandate a free internet connected PC at every airfield.

And most "older" pilots do not know how to use a PC, never mind the internet.

Where did that load of arrogant misinformed rubbish come from,I started using PC's in the early 80's,that's 1980 not my age.:(

A lot of people of my age are PC and internet savvy,so don't be o bl@@dy ageist.:ugh:

Isn't being shown how to access and read NOTAM's part of PPL training ? If it isn't then it certainly should be.

Over all the years including FAA BFR, MEP, SEP and instrument renewals (my goodness do we have to do so many renewals!) I cant recall being asked once if I had checked the NOTAMS.

I don't think any use of the internet is on the PPL syllabus, though clearly it should be given that notams are accessible (practically) only via the internet, and so is weather info. But if the CAA made it thus, they would have to mandate its universal provision on the training scene, which they have no power to do. It's a bit like the idea of mandating GPS for the PPL syllabus - they would then have to mandate its installation in the training fleet, which they could do but they would have a war on their hands from the flight training industry.

My guess is that most schools do have internet access and most of them will allow a curious student to look stuff up, but that applies to people being currently trained. The vast majority of the ~ 20,000 numbered UK pilot population gets nowhere near this.

And it's pretty evident that the 2-yearly check flights do not test this.

"I don't think any use of the internet is on the PPL syllabus, though clearly it should be given that notams are accessible (practically) only via the internet, and so is weather info. But if the CAA made it thus, they would have to mandate its universal provision on the training scene, which they have no power to do."

......I thought that there was an obligation on all training schools to provide access to NOTAM's ? I can't think of any briefing rooms that I've visited that hasn't had them pinned up on the noticeboard (ok, I haven't visited many flying schools!).

" It's a bit like the idea of mandating GPS for the PPL syllabus - they would then have to mandate its installation in the training fleet".

.......No, the CAA would have to mandate that pilots read NOTAMs before flying. I thought that they had and am quite concerned that some pilots don't check that there aren't any NOTAMs that could affect them.

"My guess is that most schools do have internet access and most of them will allow a curious student to look stuff up, but that applies to people being currently trained. The vast majority of the ~ 20,000 numbered UK pilot population gets nowhere near this.
And it's pretty evident that the 2-yearly check flights do not test this."

........Seems a pretty good reason to me as to why they should be included then.

I overheard a pilot recently who was visiting a club/school to do a check flight and NavEx. He didn't have the appropriate map, hadn't checked the NOTAMs, hadn't checked the Met (obviously unflyable because it was raining and the Met Office had issued a weather advisory for the area). Makes me wonder what's going through their minds!

A few years ago, I came face to face with a large retractable helicopter in the competition box at the UK Nationals. I was so close that I can still recall the number of pens that the chap in the RHS had in his breast pocket. Yet, he still hadn't seen me. I've had gliders run through the box (Fenland) and I've seen a gaggle of microlights landing non-radio whilst the comp was in progress in the overhead.

People make mistakes, we all know that they should not - accept it.

Narrow Route Brief, and a couple of phone calls for PPR have kept me out of trouble over the last 15 years.

Notams are a little clunky but they are the best that we have today. Live with it until something better comes along or you decide to create something better. Frankly they work ok for me.

Stik

Well, yes, it's indeed pinned to the wall or somehow there. But since that printout has to include every airfield and FIR where a member might conceivably fly to that day, this is indeed the proverbial 50-page document full of PJEs and stuff. Not fun to read through. Even worse if your geographical knowledge isn't fully up to scratch (if you're a foreigner, say) and you have no idea where Nowhereshire is - you need to plot all lat/long coordinates on a map to see if there's anything that's relevant.

As others have said, there are websites that allow a narrow route briefing which greatly reduces the amount of NOTAMs. But if no instructor points this out to the students, how are they going to learn?

BTW am I the only one who thinks the Eurocontrol PIB interface is crap? You have a choice of the basic view, which is plain HTML and doesn't allow any filtering at all, or you have the advanced view which downloads a seriously big Java applet to do your filtering. It has a number of logical errors as well (it doesn't accept a "local" flight for instance, where DEP = DEST, and if you're not interested in either the snowtam or the ashtam it throws an error.) This in addition to opening at least three or so different browser windows/tabs and hiding the most obvious buttons somewhere in the text.