Reds Interrupted

The ‘Safety Matters’ column in ‘Pilot’ reports an incident at Duxford. When the hard runway was closed and NOTAMed as such, a aircraft landed on it among the cones and taxied in with some rope trailing from its wings. 😮
The pilot had been briefed when asking for PPR that only the grass was in use….
mmitch.

Another source of good info is the flying mags like Pilot, Flyer and Today’s Pilot. A look in the calendar of events will always throw up a reference to air displays, usually with a contact number. Then you have an idea of what to look for in whatever source of NOTAMS you use.

I will generally check NotamPro if I’m off out and about. I find it reasonably easy to use, looking at a map of the UK and clicking on anything that looks as though it might be close to my route. I then tend to copy and paste this into word so as I can then print it off should it be needed. This incident seems an incredible piece of airmanship!!!!!

There’s also a lot to be said for making sure that you make your calls as well; both to your destination airfield before you go, and to whatever A/G stations you may be transitting through or near en route. I’m also thinking of the Chipmunk / skydiver incident a week or two back; making calls to airfields which aren’t directly on your route might seem to be a bit pointless on the face of it, but there’s always the possibility, nay PROBABILITY, that they’ll know something you don’t.

I believe the shortly to be available version of Navbox Proplan will have a link through to Avbrief such that you plan your route on Navbox, zap it to AVbrief and get back met and Notams applicable to the flight.

Sensible rationalisation in my view.

NOTE: I have no connection with either of the organisations mentioned above, I could have got it totally wrong.

Moggy

As a non pilot ‘enthusiast’ I have often used the NOTAMS etc as as an extra info source for fly ins, airshows etc. I do think that the web access is more complicated than it used to be. Large airshows like RIAT, Farnborough and the 3 day ‘Airborne’ at Eastbourne are (or should be) more widely known and even if a pilot doesn’t check the NOTAMS he or she should at least be aware that one is taking place. Perhaps there is an idea that airfields around the zone issue a reminder to pilots likely to be heading it that direction?
mmitch.

If I’m planning any kind of cross-country flight, even something reasonably short like LG->Old Buck, I’ll check the NOTAMs. It could be argued that it’s worth checking them anyway even for local flying … I shall do that in future.

I’ve always had a slight mistrust of the areas of influence on the NOTAMs — those indicating let’s say that a VOR is out of service have quite a large area of influence, so even if you’re out Norfolk way you might be within the area for Brookmans Park perhaps, so it’s a pointless bit of info for GA types. There’s also some NOTAMs that have quite a small radius but that I’d like to know about anyway.

I’ve looked at NotamPlot, and do use it to get an idea of what’s being reported, but my still-preferred mechanism is to get a complete FIR briefing and read (or at least skim) each item in there. Yes, it takes a bit longer, but frankly not that much longer, maybe 10 minutes. And if you’ve got the whole briefing then if you change your mind about where you’re going to go you don’t need to get a brand new briefing.

In summary I’d rather it gave me too much information and I filtered it myself, than I accidentally gave it too narrow a filter and it missed out something important.

I’ve not done any flying (other than as a passenger) in the USA, so I’ve never tried their way of briefing where you ring them up and tell them what route you’re taking and they’ll give you the weather, NOTAMs etc, so I can’t comment on how effective that is.

to be perfectly honest there are no excuses for not being able to read and understand the NOTAMs correctly and concisely, we all know how ambiguous the ais site is for NOTAMS but on the whole it isnt that difficult, I for one would seek help if I still could not understand how to operate it, end of the day when you are dealing with flight safety and lives are at risk there is absolutely no excuses not to be able to understand something, I personally set myself high standards to which I expect everyone else to do the same, we are all human, but if you dont know just ask 🙂

Deano.

Mmitch,

There are two ways of looking at this.

The Red Arrows displays and the associated restrictions are widely promulgated by way of the NOTAM system.

The fact that so many of their displays are interrupted (I saw the one at Elvington last year) by hapless tw*ts blundering into the TRA could be indicative of how pathetically hopeless your average PPL is at pre-flight planning.

On the other hand it could well show just how useless the latest iteration of the online NOTAM site, possibly the most counter-intuitive dissemination of information in the history of online communication, is.

Opinions?

Moggy