Enquiry regarding use of ATIS

[John Hill]

We produce system for aviation including ATIS and VOLMET systems and we are always looking for ways to ensure our products 'hit the target' with the users. This is not as easy as it sounds are the 'users', i.e. the people who fly the aircraft are not those who write the specifications!

Anyway, one question that pops up is the issue of real time met instrumentation feed to the ATIS machine. What would be the pros and cons of reporting winds as of the moment?

Also, do the users typically try to write down what is being broadcast? Do you have to listen to a couple of cycles to get all the information?

D-ATIS users I expect just relax and look at the screen!

[Intruder]

The more real-time, the better. if you can have ALL data as of the moment, that would be best!

Yes, we have to write it down. Enunciate and speak clearly. We often have to listen 4 or 5 times to get all the data, especially inbound to an airport, when we have to work out landing performance data as soon as we get ATIS.

[John Hill]

Thanks Intruder.

Most clients (that is the air traffic organisation) seem to not like too frequent updating of the ATIS as being updated too frequently they would tend to loose track of what you have received. My thought is that now that we have instrumentation to do it all automatically we could do the wind especially in near real time provided we had read guidelines on when to consider it a 'new' ATIS and increment the alphabetical identifier.

I am also interested in your coment that you have to listen to several cycles to get all the data as some clients seems to want a real fast delivery, one country in former Eastern Europe I thought were wanting much too fast a speaking rate.

Nowadays we have either pre recorded words and phrases or fully synthetic voices so there is no excuse for a system that do not 'speak clearly'. Pre recorded phrases can be very good but the synthetic voices are very good too now.

Thank you for your comments and I hope others at the user end will offer theirs too.

[411A]

At some stations (airports) the ATIS can be overly long, as it includes many taxiway closures and other data already included in NOTAMS.
Even obstructions due to cranes, also included in NOTAMS.

Short(er) and distinct is better.

[John Hill]

Hoboy 411A! I know what you mean! Though I am not sure how I could design a system to encourage improvement in that area.

[Romeo India Xray]

Agree with Intruder and 411A. I would add that experience helps in copying the ATIS info, add course instructions from ATC, revisions to briefings etc, put them in a dark cockpit at night in turbulent IMC and the whole lot can rush by a bit on the quick side. As there are lots of numeric values in close proximity to each other I would suggest a short pause of about a second or two between each ATIS item. This would give time to copy and ensure you have understood it as 180/12 instead of 120/18, thus necessitating listening only once or twice.

[fireflybob]

Some ATIS broadcasts are so slow you almost go to sleep whilst copying them but on the other hand some are so fast that have to listen to them again to copy the details! Also the Health and Safety warnings get me a bit like "Increased Bird Activity in the Vicinity..." whens it's the middle of the night (do they get that many owls near the runway?).

[bottom rung]

Its not so much a health and safety copout, its more to do with avoiding personal litigation. If a pilot has been told about birds in the vicinity, the lawyers can't bite too hard in the event of a birdstrike. And geese do fly at night in this neck of the woods. Same goes for cranes in the vicinity, runway condtions, danger area activity close by etc.
With regard to the constant update of the atis, I'm all for it, so long as the updates are necessary. However, a 10 degree change in the wind direction doesn't necessarily mean an atis update. This would entail a pilot listening to an atis message on arrival and quoting an already out of date atis letter to atc on first rt contact. The atco would then be obliged to ensure the pilot had the most up to date message, which in theory may be out of date even before it has been read..... Leave the updates as they are unless there is a significant change.

[Wojtus]

Anyway, one question that pops up is the issue of real time met instrumentation feed to the ATIS machine. What would be the pros and cons of reporting winds as of the moment?

They are only two values which could be directly fed to ATIS - winds and RVRs. As for the winds, they need to be accurate and current only for approach and landing. I doubt if any crew will be listening to ATIS then.
RVRs is bit different story. It usually changes slowly, but a change of 25m may be the border between approach and divert. However, instant RVR is fluctuating sometimes and needs a good averaging to make sense for ATIS report. Over FAP, when final RVR check can be made, ATC will provide instant RVR on request.

So in my opinion (as ATCO) live feed to ATIS is not helpful. Frequent changes of ATIS designators could also be a hell for us. But maybe there's need for separate frequency with wind/RVR data only?

[John Hill]

Thanks for the inputs, I will be advocating slow rather than fast speaking rate though it is our client, the air traffic authorities, who get the last say and they are also the ones who decide on the inclusion of the obstruction and bird warnings nonetheless knowledge of these concerns is useful when we are talking to our client.

We can include any values that the instrumentation provides which nowadays includes wind, pressures, temps pretty much as a minimum. RVR, present weather and cloud cover.

Wojtus, as an ATCO what is your preferred method of updating an ATIS?

[Rainboe]

Short, sharp and quick is what is wanted. There is far too much garbage included in some of them. Taxiway closures etc- usually you can work that out on the ground or get instructions which you are going to get anyway. And in 37 years of route flying, I have never yet been affected by cranes- too much information! I get irritated with 'wind 230/4 kts variable 190-270'. Gee- like 4 kts and I have to know where it's varying from? Unless it is over 15 kts, a single direction will do just fine! Real weather information won't work- how will you know when the pilot got his last ATIS and be sure he has the QNH that changed 5 minutes ago? And I would rather have a sensible average wind rather than an instantaneous incorrect one.

[John Hill]

Thanks Rainboe, I am not sure that anyone actually uses direct instrument feed to their ATIS in a continuous way . The countries I have worked with get a 30 minute, or whenever, METAR from their weather instruments and feed that to the ATIS.

What I am asking here is opinions on using continuous feed from the instruments.

As for knowing what information the pilot has taken I think the ATIS alphabetical designator is supposed to take care of that. Wojtus has pointed out that too frequent update is not good for them (ATC) and I can see that too.

There does seem to be some aspects of ATIS that could do with rethinking!

For those locations where the ATIS is only updated at routine METAR time and assuming the user tunes in several (5?, 10?) minutes prior to arrival the wind information could be 30 or even 40 minutes old. This is certainly something we (i.e. our company in our product) can do better where instrument readings are available to us.

Regarding the cranes and grass cutting etc that is not something we get asked our input on though in my experience (22 years in an air traffic organisation, non-ATCO) which is now 20 years old, I am well familiar with the inclination of some people to include every trifle.

Wojtus and any other ATCOs I really would like to talk about update methods and will appreciate your comments.

[Intruder]

It seems to me that there are actually 2 parts to the ATIS transmission at some airports -- the actual weather report and all the airport NOTAMs, etc. In HKG, for example, it is often very clear when another voice comes on for part of the transmission (and it is not a changeover, because it persists while listening for several cycles).

If the technology allows loading separate transmissions that follow in sequence, then you might be able to broadcast, for example, the hourly weather report followed by the to-the-moment wind and RVR...

[John Hill]

Intruder, we could do that easily enough and it would all be in the one voice! I think the issue then would be how much variation would be permitted before another alphabetical indicator would be required.

[Intruder]

Well, that's the key! The ATIS letter identifier changes with the weather reports only. The real-time data is prefaced with something like "real time wind is..." after a pause of some length that is longer than any used in the weather report.

[John Hill]

Yes, that is technically possible (piece of cake really)

We could begin with something like

"Present wind Ettamoogah, RVR etc etc......."
followed by
"ATIS information Bravo........
.......you have received ATIS information Bravo" we could even use different voices if that would be desireable.

Hmmm... who can I lobby to get a change to Annex 11?

Now, back to our ATCO friends, what would be your opinion on such a scheme which is basically intrument readings outside the formal frame of the ATIS?

Also, for ATCOs just how do you interact with your ATIS systems? How do you make the changes and how do you check the changes have gone to air? Some clients ask for an 'ATIS workstation' which in our product displays the current broadcast and overlays current instrument readings over a schematic of the runways giving an easy visual of cross winds etc. Other clients dont want another keyboard, screen and mouse device in the tower, they just put the update components into a text message using their AFTN input or whatever then when the update is complete they get a printed copy and can go across the audio channel to monitor if they wish. How do you handle input from the met people? Thanks.

[Tinstaafl]

The US ATIS weather is nearly as useless as tits on a bull. Like you wrote earlier, it can be nearly an hour old with reported met. conditions that are nothing like actual. Unless a SPECI to the METAR has been issued of course. Really, weather that's inaccurate isn't worth much.

Unless I'm receiving it shortly after issue most of the time in the US I find I'm most interested in the approach to expect & the runway in use. Even getting the QNH isn't normally worth the bother - it's pretty much invariably (in my experience) given by ATC even after I've advised receiving the ATIS issue letter.

I prefer the UK & Oz where a fresh ATIS is issued as soon as the Wx exceeds defined limits. For the same reason I prefer an AWOS here to an ATIS.

Like others, I've often had to listen several times to receive an ATIS. Occasionally it's because it was read too fast but most of the time it's because I have other tasks that assume priority so the ATIS gets dropped. Lengthy ATIS' are an annoyance in this case.

I don't mind an ATIS that tags *brief* aerodrome NOTAM info, say, in the form of a reminder that taxiways are closed, or even naming certain major ones, but not listing every single one. Similarly bird reminders. In general I consider T/Off & landing to always be a bird hazard so unless there's a particular flock to be mentioned it's a waste of time.

Another point about ATIS that is a minor annoyance is information sequence. Here (US) they give all the weather then finally get around to mentioning the approach type & runway. Wish they'd give the approach type/runway at the beginning, eg 'KABC information 'A'. ILS Runway 18, wind 18015G30 cloud BKN008 OVC015 VIS 1SM DZ QNH/Altimeter 1234. Cautions: NOTAMed taxiway closures, Drop Bear colony in trees 1/2sm E of RWY 18 threshold'... or something similar read slightly slower than normal speech. Higher pitched voices are easier to hear over the lower tones of piston/prop noise so usually I prefer female voices where possible. Synthesized voice makes that an easy option.

[John Hill]

OK, I am convinced, unless the ATCO folks come along and point out a problem from their end I will certainly do what (very little I am afraid) I can to get real time instrumentation into the broadcast without incrementing the ATIS designator.

Funny thing about the synthesized voices the female ones are very poor compared to the male ones. The best one we have is a pseudo Australian male voice which is really quite good. Incidently, a stored library rather than synthesized voice is not hard to do and in many respects is better than the very best synthesized voices, in my opinion.


I would love for our little company to supply ATIS systems to US airports!

[dbee]

As an aside, the UK supply excellent synthesised ATISs to Italy "This is Rome Volmet" , Not Roma!! dbee

[bottom rung]

I am also an ATCO and a Met Observer. I work in an area of the UK where the worst and most changeable weather occurs. When the wx is unstable, highly changeable or just downright nasty and on limits, the vis/wind/cloudbase/rvr change so quickly that the ATIS is always out of date. When it is really bad the wx can change to outside limits during the time it takes to physically read the wx over the rt to the aircrew!
In my opinion real time updating of the ATIS is fine so long as the ATIS letter is only updated for significant changes. (A significant change is defined in the UK documentation somewhere and if you wish I will try to find it later.)
Ultimately the the best real time met info in a changeable environment is that which can be passed on the rt at the exact time required for the captain to ascertain whether or not they are within limits.