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Notams are just a pile of garbage

Great to hear somebody actually say this


Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Succinct summary here: https://www.flightsafetyaustralia.com/2018/09/ntsb-concludes-runway-near-miss-investigation/

Includes an interesting link to discussion about the “myth” of pilot error…

YPJT, United Arab Emirates

This is great stuff. I hope something good comes out of this. A flight from europe to the us requires about 100-150 pages of paper, most of it is notams. We check in 90 minutes prior departure. Usually at the gate 60 minutes prior push. If you go through everything there would be a a delay everytime so we do it in the hotel in our rest time before leaving for the airport.

The same crap is getting more common for briefings.
Briefing from „brief“ ie short, brisk… has turned into a pdf of the briefing package in goodreader with 65 yellow marks that are read out… it’s usually brits who do this – no idea why, maybe cultural.
Then we do a „threat and error“ brief (tem elements).
A while ago a colleague said „yes for threats and errors keep in mind there are birds around the airport.
I challenged him: „good info, but what are we gonna do about the birds?“ Staring at me like a bus…

It’s all procedural bullshit, and that is a technical term* (*copyright ntsb).

always learning
LO__, Austria

If you check Croatian Notams you’ll see one zillion “Unmanned aircraft…”, “Parachute jumps…” and similar which actually don’t happen but someone defined that if someone plans to do something, Notam will be issued. So it’s easy to miss something important in that pile of rubbish.

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

I have been engaged in aviation lobbying for about 20 years. Even back then it was widely recognised by everyone that the NOTAM system is crap and not fit for purpose, and the authorities have done very little to improve the situation.

Yes, there has been some improvement in electronic dissemination, such that systems like SkyDemon can pick them up and display them graphically, but nothing has been done to reduce the number or make them more human readable.

In fact, in the UK anyway, the Vauxhall helicopter crash has meant that the number of temporary obstacle NOTAMs has increased massively. Possibly also lights failed on obstacles.

As ever with bureaucrats, they are blind to the fact that there are impacts both of doing things and not doing them. If they got rid of all the firework displays and equine events maybe, just maybe, we’d notice when there is a RA{T} or runway closure. (Sorry about the curly brackets, the T just disappears in ordinary ones.)

But, as ever with aviation bureaucrats, they are mostly air traffickers, so find it very difficult to see issues through pilots’ eyes.

I did think that innocent fare paying passengers would have to be killed by a NOTAM to make anyone in authority take notice, but maybe, just maybe, if the NTSB shouts loudly enough, 600 people coming within a few seconds of death will prove to be enough.

Last Edited by Timothy at 29 Sep 15:34
EGKB Biggin Hill

Greece – Turkey NOTAMs are also notorious in this respect. This article explains. Also here.

The Digital NOTAM concept will solve lots of these, but it will take some years to be fully implemented.

LGMT (Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece), Greece

This article regarding flight MH17 also shows the NOTAM situation.

LGMT (Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece), Greece

Presumably MH17 thought that flying above FL320 they would be complying with the notam?

Unfortunately most airlines disregarded the political situation, because it saved them fuel. I recall that British Airways was one of the few who avoided the area.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

And this is a classic from that article:

skydriller wrote:

And this is a classic from that article:

What does it say? Is it a list of obstacles?

ESME, ESMS
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