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NOTAM Outage

MED

MED

Well Known Member
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. :confused:
 
As the PIC, Your required by regulation to have current information including NOTAMS for your flight.

NOTAMS can be issued at any time for hundreds of reasons.
 
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As a scofflaw who routinely flies around the home patch without first talking to a briefer and getting all available weather information (I do check TFR's for any unexpected movement of Self Important Persons in my area), I'd be interested to see what could have happened from an enforcement standpoint if I had made such a flight during the outage.
 
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.
 
MED said:
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. :confused:
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More of a part 121 issue where the dispatcher is required to review applicable NOTAMS prior to releasing a flight and PIC responsible for them as well so without current information available there was no way to release flights. Also, the FAA ground stopped airlines anyways.

Part 91 of course you are responsible for what's in the NOTAMS but don't need to put your signature and career on the line as having reviewed them.
 
Thanks. More or less what I thought. I didn’t look at Flightaware before 9:00 a.m. to see if there were airborne GA aircraft.
 
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.
 
Desert Rat said:
Also; when did it get changed to "Notices for Aeronautical Missions" or whatever the heck they're calling it now?
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https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/notams-now-notices-to-air-missions/

It is still called a NOTAM.

Look at it this way, if the acronym itself had changed (as opposed to only the words making up the acronym), the FAA would have had to change hundreds (thousands?) of regulation wordings and other FAA publications. Keeping the same acronym was way way way cheaper than coming up with an entirely new name (acronym). Given their orders, at least someone at the FAA figured that one out.
 
Desert Rat said:
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.
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It's Notice to Air Missions. It happened last year about 7 or 8 months ago at least as the OSH NOTAM had the change which is when a lot of us noticed it for the first time.
 
Auburntsts said:
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."
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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...
 
RV7A Flyer said:
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...
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That was the point I was trying to get across from a previous post that said you had to check the NOTAMs. 103 doesn’t say “NOTAM” anywhere so the website being down doesn’t in and of itself preclude part 91 operations, at least IMO.
 
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Notams

For smaller non airline airports the notams are very unreliable. Couple years ago my destination airport posted the wrong date for runway closure for resealing. Last summer an airport that was notamed closed was not closed. I went to the next airport anyway so never knew what was going on.
 
Auburntsts said:
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.
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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.
 
plehrke said:
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.
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Again, that was my point. See my post #12
 
VFR continued on Jan 11

During the Jan 11 NOTAM outage GA planes were flying around Central FL like a normal severe clear day. Parachute ops in full swing. I saw typical flight operations at KDED.

Someone I know flew his RV to multiple Controlled and Uncontrolled fields in Florida, talked to more than one Approach Control and Towers, did T&Gs and Full Stop landings, just a normal day.

Definitely nothing like 9/11/2001 when the FAA ordered, over ATC frequencies, that all planes were to land.

Carl
..
 
I was slow to recognize what was going on with the word change. Kept asking myself what missions where going on at IAH.
 
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