| NOTAM Changes Imminent / Rose Marie Kern |
Many of you may have heard that the US NOTAM office is mandating changes to the methods by which NOTAMs are formatted. This is scheduled to be implemented at the first of the year.
The changes are part of a three year process which will bring the US into ICAO compliance and will offer new avenues for airport managers and others to submit the NOTAMS.
First of all, there will be no more Local Notams. All NOTAMs will now essentially be D or distant NOTAMs. Prior to this time the NOTAMs were split up because the computer systems of old were not capable of handling the large volumes that today’s computers are capable of – so the old D NOTAMs were ones which could potentially cause you to change your planned route in some way. These NOTAMs were such things as Airport closures, Runway Closures, ILS out of service or no fuel available.
Local NOTAMs were always supposed to be ones that you should be aware of, but they probably would not cause you to change your destination. Examples of these would be taxiway closures, PAEW (People and equipment working) or PAPI out-of-service NOTAMs.
Several pilots would disagree on some of the National NOTAM Office’s interpretations of need-to-know. Santa Rosa airport is nearly 100 miles away from the next airport – so when they issued a NOTAM saying that Santa Rosa was not accepting credit cards for fuel, several pilots were upset that it was a Local NOTAM only and therefore the pilots could not receive information about it if they spoke to any flight service or online service other than ABQ AFSS.
With the new system all NOTAMs will be available to you prior to your flight. The new NOTAM formatting is designed so that in the future, computers can be programmed to pick up on the keywords and separate the types of NOTAMs into categories.
As you know, whenever you or your Briefer pulls the NOTAMs off of a computer screen, you are looking at pages and pages of information that is not pertinent to your flight. You have to sift through mountains of radio tower light outages and information on runways or navaids at airports enroute in order to find the information that is truly important to you.
These are the Keywords that the NOTAMs will contain:
AD Airport (Aerodrome)
RWY Runway
TWY Taxiway
APRON Apron
OBST Obstruction (tower lights etc)
NAV Navaids
COM Communications
SVC Service (Tower, FBO, etc)
AIRSPACE Airspace blockages such as Refueling tracks and Restricted Areas
U Unconfirmed
O Other – Anything not meeting the above criteria
U for Unverified is what you will see whenever the received information is vital for the pilots to know, but it was given by someone who is not really authorized to issue a NOTAM. For instance, a pilot on approach to Double Eagle Airport calls and says the ILS is not working. In this case only airport managers or Airway Facilities technicians are really allowed to issue NOTAMS about the naviads serving their airports, but the condition is something that really needs to be known – so we go ahead and issue the NOTAM as U. Later, when Flight Service has gotten hold of the manager, it is cancelled and re-issued as NAV.
AD is the new designator for Airport NOTAMs instead of AP because it is the international contraction for Aerodrome.
Here are a few examples:
ABQ D09/005 CNX NAV VOR OTS
ROW D10/030 ROW SVC TWR CLSD
ABQ D09/009 ONM AIRSPACE AR117V ACT WEF 0709100300-0709100615
SAF D09/004 SAF AD CLSD
Eventually, if the computer can separate all the NOTAMS into these groups, then when you are being briefed, the Briefer will not bother to open up the pages full of unlighted radio towers during the day or whenever you are traveling well above that altitude. No one will need to sift through surface information for the hundred airports enroute just to find information that could be pertinent.. This should save the Briefers and the pilots a good deal of time.
The last we heard at Flight Service, implementation of the system was moved to January 1st 2008. This article is a heads up based on information disseminated to the Pilot Briefers– not an official notification by the National NOTAM office. Look for that information to be sent out to the aviation community sometime over the next few months.
For those of you who issue NOTAMs regularly, you will be happy to know that Lockheed Martin has implemented a change to its phone tree system that should allow you to more easily access NOTAM/Flight Data specialist serving your area.
To issue a NOTAM call 1-877-4-US-NTMS (1-877-487-6867). The voice system will ask what state you are calling about and send you directly to the person handling that state. You may be on hold if they are taking another call, but this way you will be assured of reaching the person who will be familiar with your area.
Also, a later step in the National NOTAM office changes is the development of a computer program which will allow airport managers and others to input their NOTAMs directly into the system rather than having to call Flight Service.
Rose Marie Kern works at Lockheed Martin’s ABQ AFSS. If you’d like to ask Rose a question send her an email at solarranch@aceweb.com.
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