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FAA NOTAM System Outage

fly.faa.gov

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Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#171

Post by bombcar »

devmor wrote: post #164
bombcar wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wish they just had a steady LED from the mains power on them when the battery was dead. Seems much easier to me.

Yeah, I bet one somewhere has it, but most just flash-when-chirp which is kinda annoying:

This alarm has a low/missing battery monitor circuit which will cause the alarm to “chirp’” approximately every 30 - 40 seconds for a minimum of seven (7) days when the battery gets low. The chirp will be accompanied by a flash of the Safety Light. Replace both bat- teries when this condition occurs.

Some of the newer ones come with a built-in Lithium battery that supposedly is good for 10 years.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#172

Post by wstuartcl »

eternalban wrote: post #100
rwmj wrote: post #56

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

"There are three parts to the problem: the system, the format, and the content. The system is actually quite amazing. The AFTN network connects every country in the world, and Notam information, once added, is immediately available to every user. Coupled with the internet, delivery is immediate. The format is, at best, forgivable. It’s pretty awful. It’s a trip back in time to when Notams were introduced. You might t…

Its even more amazing when you really sit down and think about all of the systems (many highly resistant to change like aircraft navigation systems) that all connect and utilize this service.

What appear like simple changes and proposals in the aerospace realm are extremely hard to execute and many times take decades (multiple) to come into play. Global services/systems are even harder.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#174

Post by tjohns »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #173

[flagged]

Most glitches are localized, or there's backup systems, or you can fall back to manual human processes.

If pilots/dispatchers can't get current NOTAMs, the aircraft can't safely depart - especially if they're flying IFR. There's no way around it.

(One could argue about whether it's legal for general aviation traffic to depart VFR - the regs say you need "all available information", and the information isn't available. But that's arguing semantics.)

There was a NOTAM outage about a year ago where Leidos' (the Flight Service contractor in the lower 48) computer system failed and prevented entering new notices, but as a backup they were able to call Alaska FSS on the phone. Since Alaska's FSS is still run by the federal government and used a different computer system, their system was still online.

But in this case the outage is on the FAA's (upstream) side.

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#176

Post by tjohns »

bombcar wrote: post #120
azherebtsov wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s up to airline how they present NOTAMS to the pilot in the briefing package. They can (and do) use geolocation present in some (many) NOTAMs to filter them out. For example do not show the NOTAM just because the flight path intersects with the airspace. They can do even better - consider not only location but also altitude range, the best flight planning systems can consider also estimated time of arrival of…

Airlines aren't the only things doing "air missions" - there is software that filters out much of it, but it IS quite archaic (similar to how the "official weather" notifications are set out). Look at the Ukraine one for a pretty scary example.

The official weather notifications (METARs/TAFs) can be displayed in more modern ways, but many pilots like the brief coded weather messages because they can be easily skimmed for an entire route of flight.

In my mind, AIRMETs were a bigger problem - they had limitations in terms of how they were geographically defined, time range, and lack of flexibility (e.g. differentiating turbulence vs LLWS vs strong surface winds for AIRMET Tango) - but that's been fixed with the newer G-AIRMET feed[1], which is based around BUFR[2] instead of plain text.

The catch being you can't easily convey G-AIRMETs via voice or in an non-interactive environment, so we still keep the legacy text-based AIRMET feed around in parallel.

[1]: https://www.aviationweather.gov/gairmet/help

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BUFR

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#178

Post by twblalock »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #173

[flagged]

> What's going on? I don't believe the "technical glitch" narrative. I'm sure there have been many glitches since 2001, and yet FAA never felt the need to do this.

Are you saying the FAA is not telling the truth? What evidence do you have to believe this is a conspiracy, rather than simply an unusual event?

Re: FAA NOTAM System Outage

#179

Post by TechBro8615 »

twblalock wrote: post #178
TechBro8615 wrote: post #173

[flagged]

> What's going on? I don't believe the "technical glitch" narrative. I'm sure there have been many glitches since 2001, and yet FAA never felt the need to do this. Are you saying the FAA is not telling the truth? What evidence do you have to believe this is a conspiracy, rather than simply an unusual event?

Did I say anything about a "conspiracy?" It's not like any government agency has ever lied to the population to prevent a panic.
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