The last hurdle
For 60 years, NOTAMs have been a pain for pilots. The industry has tried many times to fix them. All efforts have ultimately failed. The NOTAM system today is worse than ever. In 2022, the total number issued exceeded 2 million for the first time. Briefing lists routinely exceed 100 pages. Crews regularly miss critical information.
Our “Fixing NOTAMs” group (led by OPSGROUP) has been actively working on a solution since 2018. A history of our efforts is here. A timeline is further down in this document. We have worked directly with ICAO, the FAA, IFALPA, and hundreds of individual pilots and dispatchers. In May of 2023, we ran a “Sprint Week” to create a working prototype that solves the problem. 300 people took part. It worked.
The outcome of the Sprint Week was a protoype briefing system that automatically creates a briefing PDF, with critical NOTAMs first, and simple English summaries. We start with a list of NOTAMs for the flight. AI is then used to apply a pre-determined tag to each one (like “Runway Closed”). An adjustable set of rules decides the order of NOTAMs for key airports, alternates, and enroute airspace. A Briefing PDF is then created, putting the critical stuff at the stop. Dark NOTAMS – everything that isn’t critical or useful – are sent to an Appendix. We call this whole process SuperNOTAMs.
NOTAM Camp 2024
In February 2024, we launch “NOTAM Camp 2024“. This is an airline trial of the prototype, where 20 airlines will develop the prototype into a working model in the real world. For eight weeks, we will work together to bring this to life.
Participating airlines, confirmed:
Aerologic, Air Atlanta Icelandic, Air Canada, Air France, Air New Zealand, Air Tanker, Atlas Air, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, DHL (Tasman Cargo), Fedex, Hawaiian Airlines, Scoot, Silkway West, Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, Transavia France, UPS, United Airlines, and Virgin Australia.
Why airlines first?
Airlines tend to have the most control over the NOTAM package that gets produced for their pilots. Equally, airlines and their crews feel the pain of oversized briefing packages more than most. Airlines have in-house expertise. Airlines also carry a certain weight – if a handful of well known operators can implement this and make it work, the industry will follow.
Who owns the thing that gets built?
Everyone, and no-one. This is an industry collaboration to solve a sixty-year-old problem, for the benefit of all. The aim of the NOTAM Alliance is to create a blueprint that anyone can use and adapt to their operation. Ultimately, we want pilots and dispatchers to have a vastly improved NOTAM mechanism.
Timeline – How we got here
2018 – NOTAM Survey – Input from 2,100 pilots and dispatchers on the NOTAM problem and 1,344 ideas on how to fix it. Petition signed by 10,000 pilots to fix NOTAMs.
2019 – Collaboration with FAA on Future Notam System, Washington NOTAM Summit
2021 – Partnership with ICAO, IFALPA and IFAIMA – Global Campaign for NOTAM Improvement. Focus area was Old NOTAMs.
2022 – Collaboration with ICAO Working Group on NOTAM improvement
2023 – NOTAM Sprint – a week in May 2023 where 300 NOTAM experts came together to build a working prototype. We called the result “SuperNOTAMs”
2024 – NOTAM Camp!
If you’d like to take part, we can still accept another 1-2 airlines. Email team@notams.org for the details.
We will provide an update again after the trial.
