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FAA NOTAM System Outage

fly.faa.gov

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Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#151

Post by ineedasername »

maxcan wrote: post #140
dpe82 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: it's just "Ukraine" not "the Ukraine." See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine

Double nit: this was not a misuse the deprecated term "The Ukraine" but the correct use of 'the' attaching to "Ukrainian one" referring to the NOTAM basically telling everyone to remain clear of Ukrainian airspace.

nit RFI: What is it about "Ukraine" (phonetically maybe?) that makes me, a westerner in the US, want to put a "the" before it every time I reference it as a country instead of just, you know, using the name of the country?

I don't go around calling other proper nouns "the" (mostly). I don't call my son "Hey there, the Bob, how was school today?" (his name is not bob). But if I had named my son Ukraine then I feel like I'd change that sentence to: "Hey! The Ukraine, how was school today?"

Why is this a thing? I have a formal background in applied/computational linguistics and a bit of trivial searching doesn't really reveal why this is a general tendency. Hurt's my brain meat.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#152

Post by wstuartcl »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #142

TIL that NOTAM now stands for "Notice to Air Missions." Back when I was flying it was "Notice to Airmen." Wondered when they would get around to fixing that. Guess they finally did.

Both are still in use. For instance during your pilots tests either is considered an equivalent answer.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#153

Post by beowulfey »

unionemployee wrote: post #95
quantified wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What embarrasses you about it, esp compared with more modern systems? This seems like the kind of critical infrastructure whose uptime requirements can make upgrading challenging once in place.

Others have said it better. If you google 'notams are broken', numerous results will show up explaining various problems with the NOTAM system. Edit: Here's a good one - https://fixingnotams.org/ending-notam-nonsense-in-the-digita... A general inefficiency example using two airpots I often have in mind: IAH and JFK. In IAH, traffic is spaced out in cruise well before the arrival begins, where they're burning much les…

Based on this and the other great PDF someone posted, it sounds like the system itself is fine, but the content is the core problem.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#154

Post by azherebtsov »

maxcan wrote: post #136
bombcar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun but deadly. They’re not wrong about the absolute avalanche of irrelevant data that will be used to show you “you should have known” - hence the proliferation of “interpretation” services.

100%. As a GA pilot who mostly flies under IFR, the NOTAM system is borderline useless to me. For every warning about an approach being altered or a runway closed, there are 100s of "birds invof airport" or "unlit crane 50' AGL 5 miles from the field" NOTAMs. And even for the relevant NOTAMs, Foreflight will highlight them for approaches etc and ATC won't send you to a closed runway or taxiway.

I think you’d not argue that if you flight to the airport without ATC (there are plenty of those), reading NOTAMS about that airfield is kind of essential exercise before flight.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#155

Post by bombcar »

ineedasername wrote: post #146
maxcan wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. As a GA pilot who mostly flies under IFR, the NOTAM system is borderline useless to me. For every warning about an approach being altered or a runway closed, there are 100s of "birds invof airport" or "unlit crane 50' AGL 5 miles from the field" NOTAMs. And even for the relevant NOTAMs, Foreflight will highlight them for approaches etc and ATC won't send you to a closed runway or taxiway.

Seems like it's the sort of thing that's borderline useless right up until the moment it's absolutely essential. Like the smoke alarms in my house, which are actually wired up to mains so don't technically need a battery, but they still have to have a battery in them and will give high pitched chirps ever few minutes when the battery is dead. And since there's so many in the house, and the chirp only comes every few…

I wish those mains-powered ones would just shriek continually if the battery was low AND mains power failed; then you could kill the breaker and find it easily.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#156

Post by bombcar »

ineedasername wrote: post #151
maxcan wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double nit: this was not a misuse the deprecated term "The Ukraine" but the correct use of 'the' attaching to "Ukrainian one" referring to the NOTAM basically telling everyone to remain clear of Ukrainian airspace.

nit RFI: What is it about "Ukraine" (phonetically maybe?) that makes me, a westerner in the US, want to put a "the" before it every time I reference it as a country instead of just, you know, using the name of the country? I don't go around calling other proper nouns "the" (mostly). I don't call my son "Hey there, the Bob, how was school today?" (his name is not bob). But if I had named my son Ukraine then I feel lik…

Here's some that you want to "the": Alps, Matterhorn, US Navy, Rock.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#157

Post by pixl97 »

ineedasername wrote: post #146
maxcan wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. As a GA pilot who mostly flies under IFR, the NOTAM system is borderline useless to me. For every warning about an approach being altered or a runway closed, there are 100s of "birds invof airport" or "unlit crane 50' AGL 5 miles from the field" NOTAMs. And even for the relevant NOTAMs, Foreflight will highlight them for approaches etc and ATC won't send you to a closed runway or taxiway.

Seems like it's the sort of thing that's borderline useless right up until the moment it's absolutely essential. Like the smoke alarms in my house, which are actually wired up to mains so don't technically need a battery, but they still have to have a battery in them and will give high pitched chirps ever few minutes when the battery is dead. And since there's so many in the house, and the chirp only comes every few…

We recently had a house burn in our neighborhood during a power outage that was running on a generator. Generator itself caught fire, so pretty much would cover that exact situation.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#158

Post by cjrp »

someguydave wrote: post #132
cjrp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not retain it, you probably have a copy with you which you would read if you did end up diverting somewhere. NOTAMs also affect which airports go in your "would divert to" list when you're planning the flight. E.g. if the NOTAMs say AirportA's lights are unserviceable, you wouldn't plan it as a diversion airport for your night flight.

Seems to me like “I am in a sudden aircraft emergency” is not the best time for a pilot to begin reading dry material.

There are many reasons to divert, not all of them big emergencies. Weather at your destination is worse than forecast, for example.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#159

Post by NelsonMinar »

rwmj wrote: post #56

Fun stuff about NOTAMs: https://fixingnotams.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Field-Gu...

This is hilarious. Really appreciate the examples of irrelevant clutter obscuring important information. Any UX designer can learn from this as an example of what not to do.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#160

Post by ineedasername »

pixl97 wrote: post #157
ineedasername wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it's the sort of thing that's borderline useless right up until the moment it's absolutely essential. Like the smoke alarms in my house, which are actually wired up to mains so don't technically need a battery, but they still have to have a battery in them and will give high pitched chirps ever few minutes when the battery is dead. And since there's so many in the house, and the chirp only comes every few…

We recently had a house burn in our neighborhood during a power outage that was running on a generator. Generator itself caught fire, so pretty much would cover that exact situation.

Yes, it wasn't like this in my house until some years ago when we had a small expansion constructed and the contractor installed these in the new portions just as a standard thing he does, and said he was retro fitting the rest of the house that way too. ( We know him, friends, so we know he wasn't just trying to get extra $ out of us)

For a few minutes I thought it seemed a needless detail, until I realized that often enough people forget to change their stand-alone unit batteries and maybe deal with the the occasional chirp in an "I'll get to it" mindset until it runs down completely. Having it tied to the mains solves that because it's relentlessly annoying to hear that chirp at random intervals, and the battery is a nice backstop failover from the mains going unexpectedly molten.

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