NOTAMS Going ICAO in December….

[hammdo]

https://flighttrainingcentral.com/2024/09/notams-transitioning-to-icao-format/?trk_msg=PTP08S0MM08K918PE9VHV4N1D0&trk_contact=T7S76GU0EO106JVQRAFRT2RDBS&trk_sid=M3B5IC375KGR7M8781JS9LHMIG&trk_link=G1Q75L81LKPKJ8CEHVP5CS4UB0&utm_source=MarketingEmail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=READ+MORE&utm_campaign=FF24095A&utm_content=Fast+Five+-+October+5
 

-Don

[NickG]

4 minutes ago, hammdo said:

https://flighttrainingcentral.com/2024/09/notams-transitioning-to-icao-format/?trk_msg=PTP08S0MM08K918PE9VHV4N1D0&trk_contact=T7S76GU0EO106JVQRAFRT2RDBS&trk_sid=M3B5IC375KGR7M8781JS9LHMIG&trk_link=G1Q75L81LKPKJ8CEHVP5CS4UB0&utm_source=MarketingEmail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=READ+MORE&utm_campaign=FF24095A&utm_content=Fast+Five+-+October+5
 

-Don

Oh Great. They made it even more confusing. Hopefully Garmin/ForeFlight decoders will be ready day 1

[0TreeLemur]

Greeeaaat.  ICAO format always makes things so much clearer- NOT.  I'm with @NickG.  Gimme a decoder ring so I don't have to remember how to unscramble that bowl of SpaghettiO's.

[Andy95W]

Doesn’t seem that bad to me.

35 years ago we didn’t have Class A, B, C, D etc airspace.  We had TCAs, ARSAs, TRSAs, etc.  When they decided to change it, everybody complained but it wasn’t that bad.

We also didn’t have METARs and TAFs.  We had SAs and FTs.  When they decided to change it, everybody complained but it wasn’t that bad.

[Hank]

16 minutes ago, Andy95W said:

Doesn’t seem that bad to me.

35 years ago we didn’t have Class A, B, C, D etc airspace.  We had TCAs, ARSAs, TRSAs, etc.  When they decided to change it, everybody complained but it wasn’t that bad.

We also didn’t have METARs and TAFs.  We had SAs and FTs.  When they decided to change it, everybody complained but it wasn’t that bad.

So what's the point of:

• Putting ZAU into the header of a NOTAM for ORD? It already tells us "ORD" is where it's at.
• Putting the actual information last???
• The Q line is unnecessary government gibberish that no-one will ever wade through except when asked by the DPE on a checkride.

I plan to ignore everything else until after I decide if it affects me.

What needs to change with the NOTAM system is the huge number that we are buried with, and the important stuff like closed runways is often on page 8 or 9 of the 12-15 pages of stuff.

I printed out everything once for a 2 hour flight from WV to KY, and had notams from Kansas to Boston to Miami . . . . . I don't do that anymore. 

[Andy95W]

56 minutes ago, Hank said:

 

What needs to change with the NOTAM system is the huge number that we are buried with, and the important stuff like closed runways is often on page 8 or 9 of the 12-15 pages of stuff.

⬆️⬆️This, exactly.  I really couldn’t care less about format.  Things change, we adapt, we move on.  No big deal.  Do I wish they would’ve just left it alone? Sure, but I’m not losing sleep over it.

Until somebody fixes the system like Hank said I’m not going to complain about something as innocuous as its format.

Edited October 7 by Andy95W

[0TreeLemur]

21 hours ago, Andy95W said:

Doesn’t seem that bad to me.

35 years ago we didn’t have Class A, B, C, D etc airspace.  We had TCAs, ARSAs, TRSAs, etc.  When they decided to change it, everybody complained but it wasn’t that bad.

We also didn’t have METARs and TAFs.  We had SAs and FTs.  When they decided to change it, everybody complained but it wasn’t that bad.

When we went from TCA's, ARSA's, and TRSA's, to class A,B,C,D,E,G, that was an improvement.   With recent ICAO changes our "/g" transmogrophyed into all that PBN gobbledygook.  It seems to me that this new NOTAM format is more of the same.   They took what was modestly decipherable and FUBAR'd it into gibberish.

Oh, and GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

[Vance Harral]

21 hours ago, Andy95W said:

Until somebody fixes the system like Hank said I’m not going to complain about something as innocuous as its format.

+1

I teach my students that the NOTAM system is not designed to give valuable information to pilots, it's designed to shield people on the ground from liability.  No matter how small the risk, no matter how far-fetched the scenario that would actually lead to maiming and death, everyone on the ground just wants to be able to say, "Well, I posted a NOTAM."  Tower operators don't fix lights any more, because they know it's cheaper and easier to just keep re-filing that NOTAM (some of the ones in my area have been up for years).  Same with VORs, cranes, etc.  When I can't sleep at night, I sometimes wonder if it would be feasible to band together as pilots and simply boycott the NOTAM system.  To announce to the government and the public at large (including the media), "We refuse to use this broken system.  The people responsible for managing it are putting you at risk."

Back to the subject at hand, I think @Hank is missing something important about that, "unnecessary government gibberish" in the Q line.  The info sheet from Sporty's says that line is intended in part to support, "the automated filtering of NOTAMs".  I hold out a bit of hope that in the future, one might be able to configure Foreflight or Garmin Pilot or 1-800-WX-BRIEF or whatever to simply not tell me about UAS below 400', unlit towers, instrument procedures for VFR flights, and so forth.  I'll sign any waiver they want me to sign to do so.

[hais]

Suppose it's your lucky day and you've been given a blank sheet and authority to change the system.

What would be your design? For this exercise, it would be useful to separate the format problem from the information problem. 

[Hank]

Get rid of the stupid Q line, it's for their system and not intended for pilot reference, so don't disseminate that line.

Only provide relevant NOTAMs, not all of  those for several hundred miles in every direction from the proposed flight.

Put them in order of priority, where a closed runways at the proposed destination comes first. Followed by changed/closed approaches at the destination, frequency changes, taxiway  changes at the destination. 

Unlit towers form the hundreds of miles between origin and destination should be last, well after affected runways and frequencies at these airports.

Other than this off the top of my head will require study to determine a priority system, not determined by the person who files the NOTAM. Just because you have a tower light burned out 8 miles east of your North-South runway when I'm planning to pass west, 120 NM away, is not very important. 

[hais]

1 hour ago, Hank said:

Get rid of the stupid Q line, it's for their system and not intended for pilot reference, so don't disseminate that line.

Only provide relevant NOTAMs, not all of  those for several hundred miles in every direction from the proposed flight.

Put them in order of priority, where a closed runways at the proposed destination comes first. Followed by changed/closed approaches at the destination, frequency changes, taxiway  changes at the destination. 

Unlit towers form the hundreds of miles between origin and destination should be last, well after affected runways and frequencies at these airports.

Other than this off the top of my head will require study to determine a priority system, not determined by the person who files the NOTAM. Just because you have a tower light burned out 8 miles east of your North-South runway when I'm planning to pass west, 120 NM away, is not very important. 

EFBs can handle that easily. The language is fairly standard, so quite trivial to let the user set priorities and filters. 

GP already has a useful feature for runways. There's also a graphical notam feature. When I file IFR, I filter out obstacle NOTAMs as an example. 

[Pinecone]

I have noticed that FF is flagging important NOTAMS (such as closed runways) at the departure and destination airports.

[GeeBee]

When I flew international, the ICAO Notams for a typical trans Atlantic flight were were about 20 pages of 10 point type. It would take 30 minutes to de-cipher them all in particular if they applied to your ETA. Usually gave that job to the relief pilot since he was low on the seniority pole. The company tried numerous schemes to auto-interpret them and narrow them down all to little avail. It will be interesting to see how Garmin and ForeFlight try to do it. I suspect deciphering will be good but given that I still get a NOTAM about not flying to North Korea on a 100nm flight from ATL, the parsing I will think will be continued to be suspect. If ever there was a job for AI, this is it.

[hammdo]

8 hours ago, Pinecone said:

I have noticed that FF is flagging important NOTAMS (such as closed runways) at the departure and destination airports.

I sent a request to ForeFlight to also add VOR notams to the actual VOR so I didn’t have to look at the nearest airport - especially when a reroute may be needed.

-Don

[Mark89114]

On 10/8/2024 at 5:19 PM, hammdo said:

I sent a request to ForeFlight to also add VOR notams to the actual VOR so I didn’t have to look at the nearest airport - especially when a reroute may be needed.

-Don

what is a VOR?

[kortopates]

what is a VOR?

There still important to fly any VOR approaches. Not legal if it’s not operational and we are required to monitor them flying a VOR approach using RNAV.

Not to mention they still make up our backup MON.


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[flyboy0681]

After all of these decades, why is it still such a cryptic system? Data is cheap.

[EricJ]

13 minutes ago, flyboy0681 said:

After all of these decades, why is it still such a cryptic system? Data is cheap.

Same with metars.    Obfuscate the information as much as possible so that the 1200 baud teletype machines can keep up, which stopped being a problem more than forty years ago.   It's dumb, imho.

[flyboy0681]

1 minute ago, EricJ said:

Same with metars.    Obfuscate the information as much as possible so that the 1200 baud teletype machines can keep up, which stopped being a problem more than forty years ago.   It's dumb, imho.

Excellent point. Although I do still keep my 9600 baud modem within arms reach when I yearn for that  all to familiar screeching noise.

[kortopates]

I don’t know, those of us that fly a lot prefer untranslated metar and taf’s. Plain language adds so much clutter it’s much harder to scan them whereas in abbreviated form i am looking at one line metars and i can immediately see whatever is important whether it be winds or ceilings.
Same with TAF’s.

Iam all for standardizing on ICAO so when out of the US i don’t need to figure out any obscure abbreviations- they will be mostly the same no matter where i am. ( different countries use different features so they are never identical) Sure i’ll need to adjust to some changes but i don’t thinks it going to be any harder than prior changes to ICAO that we’ve gone through in the past.

Flights service does a reasonable job of categorizing NOTAMs so i know where to skip (obstructions and UAS) and pay attention to airport, runway, navigation, communication’s etc

don’t get me wrong, there is still lots of room for improvement (like obstructions that shouldn’t matter to fixed wing aircraft) but only plain language for all isn’t the answer imho.


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[MikeOH]

11 hours ago, kortopates said:

There still important to fly any VOR approaches. Not legal if it’s not operational and we are required to monitor them flying a VOR approach using RNAV.

Not to mention they still make up our backup MON.


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Ah, the irony: the POM VOR, which is on the MON backup list....has been NOTAMed out of service for something like 6 months!

[kortopates]

Ah, the irony: the POM VOR, which is on the MON backup list....has been NOTAMed out of service for something like 6 months!

I know, isn’t that nuts! We’re grounded when a beacon or strobe goes out yet the government can spend months repairing a critical piece of infrastructure.


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[Sue Bon]

Back in April I got this beauty of a briefing. The NOTAMs were 20 pages long, at least in plain English, and very repetitive. It was a challenge to get through. I wish I had a relief pilot to hand it over to.

LOWS-LZIB HBDFA 05-APR-2024 1200 Bonforte ROCKETROUTE.pdf

[dkkim73]

12 hours ago, kortopates said:

I don’t know, those of us that fly a lot prefer untranslated metar and taf’s. Plain language adds so much clutter it’s much harder to scan them whereas in abbreviated form i am looking at one line metars and i can immediately see whatever is important whether it be winds or ceilings.
Same with TAF’s.

Exactly. Once familiar it is much faster to not just "speed read" but "speed parse" these. Systems that automate a lot of verbiage actually decrease SNR, speed of digestion, and intelligibility (electronic health record auto-templating to fulfill the self-licking ice cream cone of Medicare requirements comes to mind). 

My sense is that this change comes from: 

- a desire to fiddle with things and "standardize", like applying SI (metric) measurements to applications that are human-facing and involve no tooling, so don't really yield much. 

- more so the ability to machine-parse and categorize

Last year, when researching planes appropriate to my current route, I was trying to get a sense of ceilings and icing. I pulled a bunch of PIREPs using a database online. Both in the way the DB search was implemented and the raw reports I saw, I noticed that the variations in where exactly the info was, and how it was expressed. And I thought the search implementation was pretty good (a state university somewhere, can't recall exactly which). 

I suspect the explicit semantic coding will help. Kind of like XML, in some cases.