The value of NOTAMs?
 

Does anybody know why a block of airspace covering over 700nm/sq of the South-East of England from ground level up to FL100 has been notamed this weekend?

Notamed with what?

Most notams are a load of crap - stuff like "some plane will be doing a weather survey"... as if the air was not full of planes already.

If you disregard all notams which are irrelevant on the basis of telling us about something which already happens all over the place, what it leaves you with is

- prohibited areas (lots of them this summer - airshows)

- temporary Class A airspace - defunct navaids

- closed airports etc.

and those do matter.

There seems to be a permanent one about fast jets and the Bristol channel and they "may not be able to comply with the rules of the air". It is a large area and has been in force for as long as I can remember! :} I just ignore it now....

The only NOTAMs I can see this weekend which are SFC to FL100 are around all the airfields where the RAF UASs/AEFs operate, and those are all over the UK, not just SE England. I'm guessing they have a nationwide event on this weekend of either concentrated AEF cadet flying or perhaps some sort of UAS competition.

The NOTAM on fast jets in the Bristol Channel is Hawks doing fighter control training and since they're all between FL100 and FL245 they're presumably of no interest unless you're flying something pressurised or oxygenated?

NS

I don't know anybody who complies with the rules of the air :)

In Class G you fly where you like.

In CAS, you do as you are told.

Don't you give way to gliders, balloons and traffic on your right?

I comply with the rules of the air. I just hope I'm never in the same bit of air as you, IO540. :ugh:

Not really ;)

But seriously I do wonder what those "won't be complying with the rules of the air" notams really mean.

If there is a baloon, is the plane in question going to just ignore it and fly straight through it?

That's one extreme.

The other extreme of "rules of the air" is the stuff about flying to the right of a line feature. Which line feature do you pick? If there is a coast, nearly everybody flies just inshore of it - because they are expecting an engine failure but that way they still get a nice view.

I don't see the point of such notams.

My concern is that NOTAM'ing such a large area, like this:

EGUB (BENSON)
Q) EGTT/QWTLW/IV/M/AW/000/100/5137N00106W015
FROM: 09/06/19 11:00 TO: 09/06/21 21:31

E) INTENSIVE LIGHT ACFT WI 15NM RADIUS 5137N 00106W (BENSON, OXON)
AUS 09-06-0713/AS7

LOWER: SFC
UPPER: FL100
SCHEDULE: HJ
H2176/09

defeats the purpose of NOTAM's (this particular one stretches over to High Wycombe to the East, South to Reading, well to the North of Oxford) and by going up to FL100 bounces right into a lot of Class-A airspace.

Issuing blanket NOTAM's like this for so many UAS/AEF/ATC locaitons just adds to the swathe of activities that you now need to read through when planning a flight, thereby possibly masking some of the more relevant ones.

I also comply with Rules of the Air! 10540, I know you think they are crap but just wondering, do you actually know what NOTAM means?:E

Regards

Piky

IO540: "Most NOTAMs are a load of crap"

Now then, I do agree that most NOTAMs are a complete pain in the ar*e to unearth, read and inwardly digest but God help you if you miss that really important one that you didn't expect.

The Dutch pilot who found himself in the middle of the Red Arrows at Eastbourne springs to mind.

You are supposed to be in command of your flight after all.

By the way, having spent my first 18 years flying for Mrs Windsor, I can think of thousands of occasions when "not flying in accordance with the Rules of the Air" would have applied but such occasions were usually covered by NOTAM.

No offence intended, but I find some of the sentiments a little worrying here.

"Most NOTAMs are a load of crap"

"I just ignore it now"

etc.

Remind me to stay at home when you lot are out and about :ugh:

Smithy

"Remind me to stay at home when you lot are out and about"

Did you mean "Remind me to stay at home when you TWO are out and about" young Captain? ;)

Well I don't see what the problem with that statement is. The vast majority of them in my briefings seem to be about new obstacles that are erected, almost always below 500ft.

Since I don't fly that low (it's illegal in most places), I can just disregard all of them. Without them, my narrow route brief would generally be less than half it's original size.

Then there are the one notifying that some aircraft is doing a flyby. Humm....so I might meet an aircraft flying low. Well as I don't fly low, it shouldn't be a problem. It's more likely to be a collision risk while enroute, the same as any other aircraft is.

Or the ones that really wind me up....a PJE in the south west of Ireland, that is given a 99nm or sometimes 250nm radius so that my trip from Dublin to London has it included on the briefing.

IO obviously checks the notams....he's said often enough here that it's important. His point (and it's one that I agree with) is that putting in pointless notams only clouds up the picture and helps to hide notams that are truely important.

dp

Really? - I fly just offshore for an even better view, but at a height that lets me reach the beach.

(But I do try to plan the trip such that this bit is in the right direction as per the rules of the air.)

Well done IO540, got a good debate going. I don't believe for a second that you do any of the things you claim, you just like winding people up.

No, it means that if a balloon is daft enough to go into an area with notified activity which may not be able to comply with the Rules of the Air they should expect that aircraft might - for example - pass under, over or in front of them, might overtake them on the left instead of the right, might be flying closer to cloud and in worse vis than set out in the RoA, might not be showing any lights.

Dublinpilot: Can't speak for Irish NOTAMs but I can safely say that almost none of the UK NOTAMs (other than those for airports) are about new obstacles.

As regards the original NOTAM which offended gpn01, I agree that it looks like a case of a standard NOTAM being applied to all the airfields irrespective of the airspace - a bit lazy. Maybe they should just have said "increased activity in vicinity of...".

NS

piky: ""Remind me to stay at home when you lot are out and about"

Did you mean "Remind me to stay at home when you TWO are out and about" young Captain?"

Thanks for putting that better than I did ;)

At my local airfield the NOTAMs are usually mostly cranes, steel plates on taxiways and closed gates etc. Whilst closed gates or cranes on the approach won't really affect me, it's useful information for someone else. The point I am trying to make is that just because the NOTAM isn't relevant to you doesn't mean it is "crap".

Smithy

Oh dear. Just taken a look at our colleagues over there and they're suggesting that these NOTAMs have been issued in reaction to the Grob/glider collision last weekend. Seems like a rather pointless exercise. If they have really decided that the risks are now too great, they might be better to restrict all AEF cadet flying to within MATZs or controlled airspace rather than pretend that issuing a NOTAM will increase the lookout performance of civil pilots in the area (assuming of course that this was the cause of last weekend's midair). That would cover 8 of the 12 UAS/AEF airfields.
NS

Theres ANOTHER aviator forum? I thought this was THE ONE...

Would be curious to understand what their concept of 'intensive light aircraft' is. Spread across a 700nm/sq area, it's going to take a lot of traffic to come anywhere near the hive of activity in the circuit at most airfields at the weekend.....and they're not NOTAM'd. Does rather smack of someone deciding that they'll show some sort of "Duty of Care" by discharging their responsibility in the event of an accident by saying "yes, but we did NOTAM that there'd be flying"...