Reinventing NOTAMS

Fred Simonds

Tuesday, March 22, 2022 at 09:11 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

The U.S. NOTAM system was severely outdated, cryptic, and excessively voluminous, contributing to safety hazards and making it difficult for pilots to identify critical information.
Driven by legislative mandates, the FAA launched a comprehensive NOTAM Modernization Initiative, consolidating aeronautical information services and replacing legacy systems to establish a single authoritative source.
Key goals include transitioning to the ICAO format by December 2024, significantly reducing NOTAM volume, and improving their clarity and machine-readability for better filtering and presentation.
Progress includes establishing the Federal NOTAM Search (FNS) platform, automating data management, and providing better tools for airport operators to generate higher-quality and compliant NOTAMs.

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Air Canada Flight 759 almost landed at night on a taxiway adjacent to closed SFO Runway 28L on July 7, 2017. At the last moment, the pilots aborted. The NTSB estimated it came within 14 feet of another aircraft.

Investigators discovered the NOTAM closing the runway was buried on page 8 of their 27-page flight release. In late 2018, then-NTSB Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt complained NOTAMs were too confusing to be useful because “they’re written in language only a computer programmer would understand.” NOTAMs were, in his words, “just a bunch of garbage that nobody pays any attention to.”