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NOTAM statistics fun

Only English language NOTAMs were counted.

Are you sure Germany will stop issuing German language NOTAMs? Until today, command of the English language is not a requirement for VFR flying in Germany and I cannot imagine they are going to change that. Reading NOTAMs is a legal requirement for VFR flying though so they will have to keep translating.

achimha wrote:

Are you sure Germany will stop issuing German language NOTAMs?

That is how I understand the remark here (German only, in the English version of the page they left out the note about stopping the translation service in the end of 2015).

Last Edited by Rwy20 at 07 Aug 17:23

OK but I believe those translations were not disseminated by Eurocontrol. The solution they offer is that you can call the AIS briefing service by phone where they explain the NOTAMs to you. That should do and is probably less work than translating all NOTAMs.

However, some German NOTAMs are already published in Denglish:

ENTRY INTO OR EXIT FROM THE TERITORY OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIK OF
GERMANY IS ONLY PERMITTED VIA THE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTS AND VIA THE
AERODROMES AUTHORIZED BY CUSTOMS AND FEDERAL POLICE.

Two spelling mistakes in one sentence in one of the most prominent NOTAMs that everybody gets to see for every flight.

However, national language NOTAMs explain Poland’s high score. Their series U NOTAMs are published in Polish.

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM NOTAM WHERE TEXT HAS NO VOWELS
 count 
-------
   188
Last Edited by achimha at 07 Aug 17:33

achimha wrote:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM NOTAM WHERE TEXT HAS NO VOWELS

Is that a joke?

Is that a joke? 

And a good one too. Or he is just checking whether anyone is paying attention.

LFPT, LFPN

Having just returned from a trip to Poland, I could quite appreciate the joke!

I wonder about the database, though: could you get direct (even if likely enough read-only) access to Eurocontrol’s database? Or were you allowed to set up a replica of it? Or do you concoct your own database from the various European CAA’s?

EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

Great thread – thanks Achim

Jan_Olieslagers wrote:

I wonder about the database, though: could you get direct (even if likely enough read-only) access to Eurocontrol’s database? Or were you allowed to set up a replica of it? Or do you concoct your own database from the various European CAA’s?

We license the data from Eurocontrol EAD and keep a local replica for the next version of autorouter’s NOTAM lookup code. Until now we let Eurocontrol choose the NOTAMs for the flight plan (the original idea was to shift responsibility in case an important NOTAM got left out) but it turns out the EAD interfaces for this are not reliable. We literally found and reported dozens of bugs and eventually came to the conclusion that it is un-fixable due to some design shortcomings in EAD. Now that we have that large database, nothing stops me from having a bit of SQL fun

I believe there is a way to get the NOTAM database from the FAA free of charge. Unfortunately not useable for our purpose as not all European NOTAMs are sent across the pond and briefing generated using the FAA database would be incomplete (while adding a lot of US Air Force stuff for airports where they have a presence).

achimha wrote:

Unfortunately not useable for our purpose as not all European NOTAMs are sent across the pond

There was a case of a pilot in France who landed on an aerodrome that was declared closed by NOTAM. He defended himself saying that there was no such NOTAM on the site (or app) that he had used for his briefing. It turned out that the NOTAM had been marked as “local” by the authorities and thus not disseminated internationally, and the site he used didn’t get their NOTAMs from the SIA. Unfortunately I don’t know if it was based on Eurocontrol or the FAA as a source, or some other national system. The DGAC says that it is the fault of the pilot because the official source for NOTAMs in France is the SIA.

I wonder if this notion of “national” and “international” also applies to Eurocontrol, i.e. some NOTAMs may not even make their way to Eurocontrol?

achimha wrote:

We license the data from Eurocontrol EAD

Is this free of charge?

LGMT (Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece), Greece
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