A quick Air Law Question...

[RTN11]

I'm doing my ATPL exams, and Law is driving me crazy!

I'm sure this will be the first of many questions, but what actually is AIRAC? Wikipedia has it as the cycle by which the AIP is kept up to date, to ensure a good cycle is in place so any changes are notified in advance before they are implemented.

Is this accurate? I'm just trying to get my head round all the documents!

[Whirlygig]

Stands for Aeronautical Information Regulation and Control and yes, wiki has it about right!

Cheers

Whirls

[ZOOKER]

Stands for Aeronautical Information Regulation and Control, A system designed to ensure that operators have up to date information. Most changes always occur on a Thursday, (new airways, holds etc). Known as the 'AIRAC Cycle' Dates are probably in an AIP Supplement or AIC.

[Grasscarp]

AIRAC occurs at 0001 every fourth Thursday. It happens so that everyone can make changes to their navigation databases for flight planning, FMS can be updated and charts issued with new data at the same time. Every country issues a circular with any AIRAC changes - usually new waypoints on airways and updates to SIDs and STARs. If a country has nothing new they send out a circular to say no AIRAC changes. Any questions you get in the exams usually go no further beyond expecting you to know that it is updates to aeronautical data.

[mech500]

hi, hust out of curiosity, what training manuals/texts are you using? if your having to resort to wikapedia
good luck with the studies

[RTN11]

mech500

I was just being an idiot reading the wrong section, it only gave a brief description where later on it went into more detail.

Thanks to everyone, it has made AIRAC a lot clearer to comprehend. That's chapter 2 done. Air law is my nemesis.