Why do we still accept abbreviations in weather / notams etc ?
METAR’s and TAF’s I’d be happy to leave as is because I’m used to them.
NOTAM’s on the other hand!!!! My latest bugbear is JFK 13L/31R. PAPI’s us g/p u/s loc u/s centreline lighting U/s and on and on. Finally on the next page on its own hidden away. Runway closed. If the runway is closed and dug up, I honestly couldn’t care less about the other page worth of verbiage.
NOTAM’s on the other hand!!!! My latest bugbear is JFK 13L/31R. PAPI’s us g/p u/s loc u/s centreline lighting U/s and on and on. Finally on the next page on its own hidden away. Runway closed. If the runway is closed and dug up, I honestly couldn’t care less about the other page worth of verbiage.
It’s much easier and faster to scan in the METAR TAF shorthand. I’ve never used the decode on AeroWeather, always the standard format.
Also when you’re copying down a new ATIS or METAR, you’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping up writing it down longhand.
And 100% agree the biggest safety issue is the 50odd pages of NOTAMs you have to wade through, of irrelevant and future dated stuff.
It’s probably fine for those with airline departments that filter them out in a nice briefing package, but for those of us doing international ops and acquiring them all ourselves it’s a bloody nightmare and a safety hazard.
Also when you’re copying down a new ATIS or METAR, you’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping up writing it down longhand.
And 100% agree the biggest safety issue is the 50odd pages of NOTAMs you have to wade through, of irrelevant and future dated stuff.
It’s probably fine for those with airline departments that filter them out in a nice briefing package, but for those of us doing international ops and acquiring them all ourselves it’s a bloody nightmare and a safety hazard.
Psychophysiological entity
You are required to achieve a certain depth and breadth of knowledge in the ATPLs which you just have to learn,
I found the met much easier to read in the 60s'. It just seemed natural, but as it changed it either became more obscure, or my brain had already started to fade. It just didn't leap off the page anymore. OKTA is such a nice word.
During the 60s they posted a bazzillion letters to my old home, some of the contents were pink, usually telling me to keep my carb heat to hot despite the loss of power. When I moved in 1970, nothing I could do would make them readdress these gems.
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And 100% agree the biggest safety issue is the 50odd pages of NOTAMs you have to wade through, of irrelevant and future dated stuff.
It’s probably fine for those with airline departments that filter them out in a nice briefing package, but for those of us doing international ops and acquiring them all ourselves it’s a bloody nightmare and a safety hazard.
It’s probably fine for those with airline departments that filter them out in a nice briefing package, but for those of us doing international ops and acquiring them all ourselves it’s a bloody nightmare and a safety hazard.
The NOTAM's kill me. Verbose, dated, (begin/end dates, if any) and sometimes reference from the ARP rather than a rwy end....
METAR’s and TAF’s I’d be happy to leave as is because I’m used to them.
NOTAM’s on the other hand!!!! My latest bugbear is JFK 13L/31R. PAPI’s us g/p u/s loc u/s centreline lighting U/s and on and on. Finally on the next page on its own hidden away. Runway closed. If the runway is closed and dug up, I honestly couldn’t care less about the other page worth of verbiage.
NOTAM’s on the other hand!!!! My latest bugbear is JFK 13L/31R. PAPI’s us g/p u/s loc u/s centreline lighting U/s and on and on. Finally on the next page on its own hidden away. Runway closed. If the runway is closed and dug up, I honestly couldn’t care less about the other page worth of verbiage.
Ha! That is exactly what used to happen with notices to mariners - the sailors equivalent of NOTAMS. A lowly junior officer was given the task of wading through piles of N2Ms, painstakingly drawing corrections onto a paper chart with his magenta pen, and then after 20 have been added, the 21st says stick the attached chartlet over the top of the lot! It's a tough sailor who doesn't cry at that point!
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Complex ecosystems resist change
Complex technology ecosystems, in which there are many producers and consumers of data, tend to be very resistant to change. The producers of the data need to keep producing it in the "old" format as long as there are still consumers that need it; there is reduced pressure to innovate at the consumer end because the producers are still producing the old format data.
Until very recently, the major stock exchanges in the US were still maintaining, in parallel with the more modern stuff, the electromechanical systems that transmitted stock quotes in a format readable by the iconic ticker tape printer. The printers themselves were long ago junked or sold as antiques, but there were other systems around that still read the data in that format.
Until very recently, the major stock exchanges in the US were still maintaining, in parallel with the more modern stuff, the electromechanical systems that transmitted stock quotes in a format readable by the iconic ticker tape printer. The printers themselves were long ago junked or sold as antiques, but there were other systems around that still read the data in that format.
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Once the XML standard is set and agreed upon, AIXM and WXXM (etc) will enable applications to read and interpret the information making redundant the random short codes used in especially NOTAMs.
This essentially means that your chart application can create a line through a closed part of taxiway or strike through minima to approaches withdrawn by NOTAM, to name a few.
The future is in the hands of IT professionals, but they need data tat supports their cause, readable by machines, this format definition is the key. Unfortunately like many projects created and run at this level of authority, they take too long to come to fruit, meaning introductions into service is again delayed.
This essentially means that your chart application can create a line through a closed part of taxiway or strike through minima to approaches withdrawn by NOTAM, to name a few.
The future is in the hands of IT professionals, but they need data tat supports their cause, readable by machines, this format definition is the key. Unfortunately like many projects created and run at this level of authority, they take too long to come to fruit, meaning introductions into service is again delayed.
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I find the code quite more readable than longhand except for numeric groups like runway condition reports.
Our new planning software inserts line breaks for every new time group like "BCMG" or "FM" which makes for easier reading plus it shows these periods on a bar with the planned flight time superimposed, making it very easy to check whether a line is actually relevant for the flight. There's also some color coding with some conditions triggering amber and red conditions, but these often err on the cautious side when putting an airport in red because of morning fog that will be long gone until we arrive or just start the next morning (with long TAF).
NOTAM definitely need an overhaul and we should probably quit defaulting to the lowest common denominator because some country somewhere still uses an Edison-made telegraph or at least paper punch rolls to disperse NOTAM. The time is more than ripe for a NOTAM System that includes machine-readable coordinates / altitudes / times which can be shown on a map without a juniorsailor dispatcher having to plot it. (Our system can plot but you have to enter/copy the data manually which makes it rather useless.). I had hoped for some action after the NTSB bashed the NOTAM system after the near miss (in ORD?)...
Our new planning software inserts line breaks for every new time group like "BCMG" or "FM" which makes for easier reading plus it shows these periods on a bar with the planned flight time superimposed, making it very easy to check whether a line is actually relevant for the flight. There's also some color coding with some conditions triggering amber and red conditions, but these often err on the cautious side when putting an airport in red because of morning fog that will be long gone until we arrive or just start the next morning (with long TAF).
NOTAM definitely need an overhaul and we should probably quit defaulting to the lowest common denominator because some country somewhere still uses an Edison-made telegraph or at least paper punch rolls to disperse NOTAM. The time is more than ripe for a NOTAM System that includes machine-readable coordinates / altitudes / times which can be shown on a map without a junior
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NOTAM’s etc
I think without exception the NOTAM’s have been identified as cumbersome and in fact are now a hazard / flight safety risk themselves. Overhaul required. Met codes can be faster in most cases ( except Snowtam / runway reports which are still a dogs breakfast.). In some airports they use a simple code system to advise of the weather etc. I like that. A bit like the “Jet ok “ someone mentioned. I don’t care about wind unless it’s tail , don’t care about x wind unless it’s significant and RCR affected. I count the lines on a TAF etc and when they get to 5 I start looking for more alternates. Less than 2 lines - really who cares. Yes , I know this is simplifying it /stereotyping but as George Clooney said “- it’s faster “ like the lines at security - never line up behind old folks, kids or pax from certain parts of the world( that’s a fact not anything more controversial ) .. And any Notam with a “ V “ FIR ( on it , well I simply throw them in the bin. Some are several years old !!
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Some of the current initiatives will, hopefully, make appropriate and relevant briefing information more accessible and usable - provided that the people defining the future methods are suitably qualified in both aviation and information management matters. However, one of the main reasons that codes remain the most sensible way of disseminating such information for the time being is that it can be read by people without concern about the extent of their language skills in whatever tongue one might choose to use for explicit reports.
There appears to be an implicit assumption in this thread that plain language reports will be in English. It seems easy to forget, or to criticise those whose first language is not English, that working in English is not easy for many people, especially when not using standard phraseology or other standard terms. Remember also that even for native English speakers, plain language English is ripe for misinterpretation. Use of codes can overcome many of the problems that differing languages creates.
We anglophones should consider ourselves very lucky that aviation was established in an era and environment in which English was the naturally obvious language to be used. Aviation is now a truly global industry - consider for a moment if the language to be used for communication was to be based on the numbers of people speaking each language. A quick Google (so absolute accuracy not guaranteed) suggests that the number of native English speakers is dwarfed by both Chinese/Mandarin and Spanish speakers (and by some sources Hindi also comes above English) - to put it into context, one source indicates that a little under 5% of the world population speaks English while Chinese/Mandarin and Spanish are each spoken by a greater proportion of the population and together represent around 20% of the world population. Maybe we could imagine for a moment how we would feel if Chinese were selected for plain language communication in the industry - using codes might suddenly become far more appealing.
With luck, in the future we will all benefit from the pervasiveness of modern IT systems which will enable us to access information in a form or language that suits each of us. Until then, codes work.
There appears to be an implicit assumption in this thread that plain language reports will be in English. It seems easy to forget, or to criticise those whose first language is not English, that working in English is not easy for many people, especially when not using standard phraseology or other standard terms. Remember also that even for native English speakers, plain language English is ripe for misinterpretation. Use of codes can overcome many of the problems that differing languages creates.
We anglophones should consider ourselves very lucky that aviation was established in an era and environment in which English was the naturally obvious language to be used. Aviation is now a truly global industry - consider for a moment if the language to be used for communication was to be based on the numbers of people speaking each language. A quick Google (so absolute accuracy not guaranteed) suggests that the number of native English speakers is dwarfed by both Chinese/Mandarin and Spanish speakers (and by some sources Hindi also comes above English) - to put it into context, one source indicates that a little under 5% of the world population speaks English while Chinese/Mandarin and Spanish are each spoken by a greater proportion of the population and together represent around 20% of the world population. Maybe we could imagine for a moment how we would feel if Chinese were selected for plain language communication in the industry - using codes might suddenly become far more appealing.
With luck, in the future we will all benefit from the pervasiveness of modern IT systems which will enable us to access information in a form or language that suits each of us. Until then, codes work.
