Tango...That's only in the crappy airlines! :}

As a flight ops/disptach person myself, where I work it is my responsibility to edit NOTAMs (for my airport and FIR) and give them a priority. Anything lower than 2 doesn't get printed in the breifing package. Priority 1 NOTAMs are highlighted with a grey background. (Crews can get the whole thing if they want, but I've never seen anyone ask for it.)

If I miss-edit something then it's my ass, not the captains! As far as I'm concerned, it's part of our job to cut through the crap (not just NOTAMs) and give the crew what they need. They seem to trust us pretty well, so we can't be doing too badly. :\

I agree that dumping 40 pages of 90% absolute crap in front the crew is just asking for trouble. Some airlines may be too lazy to have a proper NOTAM edit system in place, I suppose and then try the "but it was in the NOTAMs" line in case of trouble. I'm glad I don't work there.

I've got a DRM (Dispatch Resource Management) course coming up in a few months. I'm sure this kind of thing will be covered (again). :ok:

Mike773

Obviously you don't need me to tell you the benefits of having a REAL ops dispatcher brief the crew on what they really need to know right now and what is less than relevant. I have always worked on the basis of "how would I like to be treated" in my briefings whether it is a face to face for a YSSY/YMML or via dispatch notes on a WSSS/EGLL.

I do remember one night I had so much to tell the chairman of the steering committee that I ended up saying on the flight plan "Captain - PHONE ME"
(He did)

Even when there is nothing to say at all I always tell them just that - after all, it's what I get paid for for.

I don't think you can ever over-emphasise the benefits of having a professional briefer available to you at sign on time however in my experience, Skippyjet airlines is one of the few non-american companies that have one.

Memo to airline management. How much will it cost to retrieve heavy metal out of the ****e.

As for the six million and fourteen notams in a normal package - my favourite is the American 747 cargo flight from YSSY to somewhere in Asia. Captain looks up and says "Hey, I see the parachute jumping at Biggin Hill is still on."

Pilot people - if you ever want me, just call.

H

Yep. I hope the guys on the top floor of my company don't get any big ideas and decide to give us all the shaft one day! :\

One of the things I've learned is to adjust my briefing to the crew situation: new crew, never been to YSSY before (or not recently) then I'm pretty thorough. But some guys are here all the time and I don't need to point out that nothing works in the POM area enroute for example.

Quickest briefing was an American crew. They'd flown down the previous day but one so basically the NOTAM part of the briefing consisted of captain saying "Anything new?", me saying "Nope", captain saying "OK. We're done!" Others have taken more than 20 minutes.

I can't imagine what NOTAMs would be like "unfiltered"; must be hell! Every day I remove all the "HN" NOTAMs and stuff that's not in our time window. Leave what is necessary. Priority 1 all the big stuff (RWY closures, major TWY closures, ILS out etc.), priority 2 the other things (TWYs closed but not on our taxi route etc.).

To all the pointy-end people: Don't forget to tell your bosses you need/want us dispatch people! :) (Unless you don't want us, of course :ugh: ;) )

Mike773

We have a nice feature in our NOTAM system. It looks at the ETD & ETA and if a NOTAM falls into these times the crew get it. If it falls outside then it's filtered out.

Not too foul for a bush airline eh ;)

H

Yeah. Ours does that too, but the window is usually pretty large so often the HN stuff gets in too. Particularly since the system does seem to have info about when sunrise is, so I suppose it just includes everything. YSSY notams about Taxiway closures etc. often go on for days but are "HN" only so our NOTAM system sticks them in since the time is technically a 24-hour period.

I must talk to someone about that. Then it would automatically block the HN stuff since we don't arrive in the dark anyway. Thanks for the idea! :) Sounds like your system is better than ours -- and we're a major! :hmm:

From a parallel thread on the Dunnunda page:(This was in reaction to a post from "MTOW" that read: "While we're all enjoying a NOTAM kicking fest, can anyone explain to me what it means when I read repeatedly in my NOTAMS that "the ILS LLZR for R/W xxx is unusable outside 25 degrees"? My question is: how in the hell do you use an ILS LLZR 24 - or even 10 - degrees off QDM? I'm obviously missing something and am sure I'll be put straight by someone within five minutes of posting.")

All,
I’m on the safety committee at our airline and am writing an article (in house pub) on this incident. Not out to bash Emirates…primarily focusing on the confusing issue of NOTAMs and how they are disseminated.
If anyone has additional information on this, please post or contact me directly. I’m particularly interested in how Emirates does their performance calculations……EFB, paper, numbers ACAR from dispatch……
Also there was a previous reference to fatigue on this sector – any details.
Thanks in advance.

So any journalist pretending being in a safety commitee can get confidential information from an airline on this forum? Doesn't sounds good to me!:=

Well, if anyone is uncomfortable posting on the forum, contact me privately and I'll give you my airline association e-mail address to reply.