Ah, sit down, point made
Manners , good manners, clarifies the matter at hand.
So that I can be sure, are you saying that AvWeb "cancelled’ a reply of yours here?
Totally agree, YARS. In the third decade of the 21st century, why is the FAA still disseminating information with a 70+ year old communication system? If the chart at the top of the article is any indication, their “solution” will only perpetuate an obsolete system rather than actually solving the problem.
Probably for the same reason that a lot of the business world is actually run by 70+ year old programming: standard processes were designed around the old technology and all the people who originally designed it are gone so no one really knows how it all works together and are afraid to introduce any new changes for fear of breaking things.
Fortunately, the likes of Garmin/ForeFlight/FltPlan all offer “plain text” translations of the NOTAMs, and more recently, even graphical depictions of them. At least the effort to eliminate the useless NOTAMs will help. More could (and should) be done, but it’s a start.
Hopefully this will also address the problem of airport/airway managements who think that simply publishing a NOTAM about a deficiency, hazard or malfunction relieves them of any responsibility to actually correct the condition.
It’s not just airport management–it’s the funding system–local/state/federal. Airport improvements and “fixits” usually require an update of the Airport Layout Plan. That can take years of "studies, and only THEN is the airport eligible for funding. In the meantime, airport engineering firms milk the system for all it’s worth–making even a simple fix VERY expensive. In the meantime, because the problem has been identified by still EXISTS, airports file the NOTAM–protecting the user, as well as themselves. THAT is often the reason that you see NOTAMS that are years old–or that have an expected expiration date 2 years away. At the airport I manage, we are 3 years into “developing a budgeting plan for the next 10 years”–because the “airport engineers” failed to consider the issues they approved on the LAST plan.
The FAA is the perfect example of government waste and ineptitude–is there any WONDER that most pilots are not advocates of big government?
I would have thought someone would have made an automatic NOTAM decoder by now. If you go to fltplan.com, they have plain-text options for METARs and TAFs, but not NOTAMs. I found no Android app for this. A web search reveals two online converters but they don’t do a very good job.
Grumpy old guy comment warning!
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This is a long-term result of Flight Service consolidation and eventual contracting. At one time the FSS Specialists knew their area and the people. Jurisdiction crossed state and regional lines, a local person knew what was going on. An airport manager could actually walk into a station and talk to the specialists on-duty. The specialists could, in some cases, look out the window and see if a runway was closed, construction in progress, or whatever. As the system got smaller, attention to detail was lost.
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As a Terminal Frontline Manager (Tower Supervisor) fighting with FSS, the Service Areas, and OKC was nearly a daily event. Getting information updated or corrected in publications shouldn’t be the battle of red tape that it is. In one case, my facility had an FDC NOTAM amending an ILS approach. After numerous phone calls, faxes, and emails OKC finally agreed it would be better to publish an updated plate. I wish this was a joke, but it isn’t…they then told me because of publication cycles it would still take almost 1 year to get the new plate published!
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Like every other piece of paper the government curses us with, each page has at least one lawsuit attached to it. Do we really need a NOTAM telling us a tower light, 30mi east of XYZ, at 125ft AGL is out of service? According to the lawyers, the answer is yes.
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And I’ll make this my last…promise. Sometimes people just fail to use their brains. Again, in the process of trying to get information corrected and updated, OKC decided to quickly publish information about 2 NAVAIDs at the facility where I worked. Oh, the only problem, both NAVAIDs were decommissioned before I started working there, and at the time I was in my 20th year at the tower. Oh, we made a mistake. And yes, they published NOTAMs showing the NAVAIDS and decommissioned and quickly pushed through a publication change…9 months later.
Was something deleted? You guys are losing me.
My thoughts exactly. If one doesn’t have to translate, they are less likely to miss key info. There’s no point in the current format any longer is there?
Wait, you may have solved why there’s no change. The companies that sell translation services are likely lobbying and promising jobs to keep the messages going out in code. ???
“It is now Notice to Air Missions (not Notices or Mission, but Notice and Missions) and no longer Notices to Airman!” because in the quest for equal rights, they neutered the airmen? Now we’re all missionaries? I gotta get a flathat and bend in a 25-mission crush? 
Now you’re talking, the real problem with notams, basically a disorganized shambles intruded upon by legal.
If these were parts manuals and service instructions so organized, we’d all be sitting on the ground. Oh and then there’s Form 337 there’s another chuckle.
As far as plain text being a problem who needs a weather report in Englese, extra verbage for no apparent reason. Do some fly with a handicap card hanging from the compass.