Forgive my ignorance, but was GA grounded during the NOTAM outage? I did not fly and don’t often use ATC guidance for local flights. Besides, I know the NOTAM for my airport, so an outage would not nave affected me. Just curious about the “legal” ramifications, if any.
Also; when did it get changed to "Notices for Aeronautical Missions" or whatever the heck they're calling it now?
So I've seen a bunch stuff on the news about this, and they are talking about a total ground stop of all airplanes, but we all know what kind of mis-information you can get from the media.
I took off yesterday morning at 0700 with a VFR student and another guy launched right after me in the same plane at probably around 0900. The note in the notam system didn't seem to pop up until later, but I don't know actually when. Tower certainly didn't say anything about it at 0700. Was that before it kicked in? Not effecting vfr? What's the real story here?
Also; when did it get changed to "Notices for Aeronautical Missions" or whatever the heck they're calling it now? Did my tax dollars pay for somebody to sit down and think up a new name for an old acronym? unreal.
Short answer was no. 91.103 says "Each pilot in command shall, before beginning a flight, become familiar with all available information concerning that flight."
Well, if the NOTAM system is down, then NOTAMs are not "available", are they? Thus, logically, not having them would not violate the FAR, assuming one "[became] familiar" with all the other *available* information.
At least, that's how I'd argue it, if I had to...
Short answer was no. 91.103 says "Each pilot in command shall, before beginning a flight, become familiar with all available information concerning that flight." Note the "all available part" and there's also alternative ways, albeit less efficient, besides the NOTAM website to gather pertinent info to meet the intent of 103.
When NOTAMs are down they are no longer “available”. So you could argue you do have all “available” information. And like someone else mentioned, it does not indicate what available includes.
I am sure I would loose the argument though against the FAA if challenged.