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Skydemon filters out IFR NOTAMS by default

I only realised that this was the case about a week ago – it seems to have been a new feature introduced around May 2020.

By default when using an iPad, after you’ve selected Start Again or Created a new route, the default flight rules are set to VFR. This means that viewing NOTAMS for any airport whether on your route or not will filter out all NOTAMs issued and marked as IFR. To view them, you have to switch to IFR or Mixed flight rules using the option under Flight Details. This was an issue for me on a flight last month where the ILS was NOTAMed as out of service but didn’t show up on my usual NOTAM check.

I rely on SkyDemon as my primary source of NOTAM information, particularly for graphic depiction of the areas affected, although I do skim through the AutoRouter briefing packs for longer airways flights. The narrow route brief on the NATS website isn’t fit for purpose because it lacks the graphical display.

I’d like to see SkyDemon provide a global default setting for flight rules, so I can leave it on Mixed. I’d also like it to display what filtering has been applied on the NOTAM page itself. I’ve submitted a post about that on the SkyDemon forum and would be grateful to any other forumites here if they could like and/or comment on that post.

I appreciate that SkyDemon is primarily used by VFR only pilots but would think that allowing those using it also for IFR or Mixed should be allowed to default the settings to that. I asked several other pilots to check the NOTAMs on that day, and none of them realised that this filtering was in place.

You can find the SkyDemon forum post here

Thanks in advance

FlyerDavidUK, PPL & IR Instructor
EGBJ, United Kingdom

Well, that discussion went off topic quickly ;).

From past experience, the number of customers getting behind a request doesn’t seem to be a criterion for SD to consider a change to what they perceive to be right…

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