Unread NOTAMs

[Pilawt]

No secret that the system for dissemination of NOTAMs is flawed. Sure, some NOTAMs are hopelessly obtuse; but others are pretty clear, and readily available.

Yesterday I used Foreflight to brief a VFR trip from El Monte CA to Goodyear AZ. (Weather was absolutely perfect, C, A, V & U all the way with calm winds at 11,500' and not even a single bump. Wished I could have bottled it.)

The briefing included the usual pages and pages of NOTAMs warning to stay out of Afghanistan and North Korea, and don't drink the water in Bangladesh. But there was a real easy one out of Palm Springs, just a few miles from our route:

Service ATIS 118.25 CHANGED TO 124.65. 31 MAY 12:30 2018 UNTIL permanent. CREATED: 30 MAY 19:53 2018
Doncha know we heard two aircraft (one a Centurion talking to SoCal, the other a major air carrier jet still with LA Center) inbound to KPSP whining to ATC that they couldn't get the ATIS on 118.25, and would the controller please check to see if it was operating. In both instances the controllers didn't know about the change either.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

It seems like Foreflight could definitely do a better a better job of screening out extraneous and impertinent NOTAMs.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

You don’t want software filtering official information. They already categorize it all, but NOTAMS are busted at the root creation level.

Maybe, but why not? Especially a configurable filter. Things way away from my line of flight and halfway around the world seem like a waste of time to even scan.

And it strikes me it may even create a sort of “boy who cried wolf” effect where people just skip over all of them or whole blocks.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

What would they filter on? Nothing in the NOTAM tells the computer (your iPad) "this is halfway around the world"... FAA spams it out in FDC NOTAMS, their "catch all" NOTAM type for long and mostly useless NOTAMS about terrorists and such, even when they know your route of flight. Not much software can do about it. FAA needs to move the non-time-essential "permanent" junk like the terrorism crap, to the AIM.

Agreed it would be better if the FAA moved this permanent "junk" out of the NOTAMs. But it seems like a higher level of parsing of the text of the NOTAM could help here. For example, on a vfr flight from KFFZ to U69 at 9500 feet , one could parse the text of "chart correct U.S. government IFR enroute high altitude chart H10" and realize this has nothing to do with anything near the route of flight. Also in international notams, the text "security..united states of america advisory for the korean peninsula" is a clue this has nothing to do with the route of flight.

One could probably use a probabilistic algorithm to get rid of the ones clearly halfway around the world and default to leaving them in if not clear.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Well ... in the briefing for my VFR flight from El Monte CA to Goodyear AZ a couple of days ago, there were FDC NOTAMS for corrections to the Washington, Green Bay, Miami and Detroit sectional charts, among others.

This is exactly the sort of thing that is happening to me in Foreflight all the time. This is where I think Foreflight could do a better job of screening out things like chart corrections that are nowhere near the route of flight.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

They are happy with us bearing the impossible burden; blame the pilot is a fun game.

Pretty clear from the reg requiring pilots to be aware of all information regarding a flight.