Military Operations and GA Flight Planning

This FAA web site is supposed to be updated every 6 minutes and may be useful when flight planning a cross country trip.

http://sua.faa.gov/sua/Welcome.do?selected=0

The site has much useful information of particular operation areas in terms of altitudes, times, text and map descriptions. For example, while much of Missouri is covered with MOA's, only one small area is forecast to be active within the next 24 hours. This to me is useful information. The last time I flew to Joplin to visit friend John Goodman and his RV-Subaru, the trip was right through one of these areas. It was not HOT and it was no big deal to have this information on hand.

There are many military operating areas around the country and they are not used 24/7. Life is much less complicated knowing when and when not they are in use.

Its a start

Thanks David,

Thats a helpful site and a beginning effort on the part of the military to make sharing work. For me two MOAs of frequent interest are the Hunter & Lemore. Neither of those is a total killer to fly around, but both are on route for me frequently.

Comparing them, the hunter MOA seems to have better information on altitudes and relatively narrow time slots. That's good. Lemore is a bit sloppy with 5 hour time slots and wide ranging altitudes.

Seems like the guys who did hunter are better planners or actually took this more seriously.

Another is the bagdad MOA that shows an 11 hour active period. I just don't believe it. That's not one I need frequently, but when I do its a major trip that is planned well in advance.

This is definitely a situation where posting realistic schedules & altitudes, verses worst case ones is going to get a better result from GA pilots. Planners who "play it safe" by blocking out much more time and altitude than they need will end up getting ignored.

Another concern is that they only go a day advance max. That is not adequate. Like most working people I need to plan my trips in advance.

Definitely better than nothing though.

Thanks!

That is very helpful. Easy enough to print out all possible MOA's along a route.

The same thing on a Garmin 396/496 would be way cool.

Check back often

MOA use often changes at the last minute, so check back often, the range may get released.

We may plan for inflight relueling and the tankers canx at the last moment, or an IFE in one jet canx the entire package. A BFM in the west may allow us to release the eastern half or the LOWAT block of an MOA.
One busted radar for an upgrade flight that requeres everybody full-up will mean the planned use of the entire block gets changed to short range commits that dont require umpteen miles of space. If your flying through an MOA used by an undergraduate flying base, dont even think about it. No on-board radar, students all over the place and SA bubble low.

Range planning is a full time job for a bunch of folks in any military scheduling shop. They work hard to release space when able.

I check with center when VFR enroute and often get cleared.

Bugsy, do you have a list of the student training bases and in particular the associated MOAs?

Just rattling the Air Force's off the top of my head:
Vance AFB, Enid OK
Laughlin AFB, Laughlin TX
Sheppard AFB, Wichita TX
Columbus AFB, Columbus MS
Moody AFB, Valdosta GA
These are the UPT bases with a heavy concentration of student training.

TankerBob said:

Laughlin AFB, Laughlin TX
Sheppard AFB, Wichita TX

Click to expand...

Actually, it's:
Laughlin AFB, Del Rio, TX
Sheppard AFB, Wichita Falls, Texas

Some of the big Navy training bases (primary thru advanced) are:
NAS Whiting Field, Milton, Florida
NAS Corpus Christi, Texas
NAS Kingsville, TX
NAS Meridian, Mississippi
NAS Pensacola, Florida

Thanks... sorry about that. It was late and I was trying to do two different things at once. Apparently my wife is right, I can't multi-task.

An excellent tool, no doubt. However, as far as I'm concerned, DoD "owns" the MOAs and I wouldn't assume that because a MOA is shown as "cold" means that it's really cold. I don't want to see how well a T-38 slices through my airplane.

TODR

Weathermeister

This sounds like a great data set for Weathermeister to query into. Dan already has TFR's as part of it. I wonder if he could mine this data for MOA/SUA airspace. It would certainly make a great flight planning tool even better. Hey Sharpie!.....