Are You Applying FDC Notams?

mojo6911 said:
Or possibly your life. How long does it take to decipher the NOTAMs you get from dispatch?
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Depends on the flight, how many NOTAMs there are and a bunch of other stuff. You might have 4 pages of paperwork that have have your release information on it, and then upwards of 15 pages of weather/NOTAM information depending on how many NOTAMs there are for each airport (and alternates) and how bad the weather is.

So now you've gotta get through all the important stuff on your flight plan and fuel etc., and after that you've gotta get through all your weather/NOTAMs while trying to do a preflight (before every flight), flows/checklists and setting the airplane up to go someplace in addition to dealing with any other things that come up during boarding ("OH NO! WE'RE WEIGHT RESTRICTED! Well, I don't want to deal with it, so I'm going to board everybody and let you deal with it!" from the gate agent). Getting all that done in under 20 minutes is a bit of a task.

Again, not to say I've rushed anything, ever. I'm the perfect pilot, I'm of course talking about the guys that would rush, and miss things, and allow themselves to get violated. We wouldn't want a frank discussion about what goes on up front now would we, including mistakes we've ALL made now would we...
 
mojo6911 said:
Or possibly your life. How long does it take to decipher the NOTAMs you get from dispatch?
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Not very long. What it applies to comes right near the beginning, most don't affect me. The ones that do usually take 30 seconds or less for me to read. If I have a question about one, I call the dispatcher and we don't leave until I'm satisfied. That almost never happens though.
 
mojo6911 said:
Or possibly your life. How long does it take to decipher the NOTAMs you get from dispatch?
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It really depends though.

Comair got cited for an extraordinary amount of NOTAMS, many of which weren't pertinent to the flight which impeded the crew from catching the important ones about the lighting and runway closures at Bluegrass.

Nonetheless, if there's a problem, I'd be on the telephone to my ALPA safety chairman about the issue like yesterday. That's what your dues are going for and that's why the chairman volunteered for that position.

I'd even file a NASA ASRS report as well.
 
Doug Taylor said:
It really depends though.

Comair got cited for an extraordinary amount of NOTAMS, many of which weren't pertinent to the flight which impeded the crew from catching the important ones about the lighting and runway closures at Bluegrass.

Nonetheless, if there's a problem, I'd be on the telephone to my ALPA safety chairman about the issue like yesterday. That's what your dues are going for and that's why the chairman volunteered for that position.

I'd even file a NASA ASRS report as well.
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According to Apple, you can also whip out your iphone and let dispatch know there is a problem. :p
 
Ralgha said:
The formatting is bad, but you can make it easier. For example, for NOTAMS applying to approaches, the type of approach is near the beginning. RNAV, ILS, NBD, etc. Skip the ones you're not going to do. Mark ones that may apply so you can find them easily if needed. At the beginning of the day/trip I'll check NOTAMS for all airports that we are going to. Mostly they don't affect us, but if I see any that do then I'll make a note of it. Then when actually doing the leg, I review the list to see if anything changed.

There is a difference between going quickly and rushing. You should never let yourself get rushed, regardless of what the captain is doing. As Doug said, if your chief pilot is worth anything, you'll never hear a word about it.
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And you just hit on the point Ethan was trying to make. The formatting is HORRIBLE on NOTAMs. I saw one the other day that was almost a full page long that had a ton of changes to a procedure.

I don't know about how your NOTAMs are displayed, but ours have no formatting to them. It's a giant mess of characters in caps with no line breaks, which doesn't lend to being able to find information quickly and easily. I think it's hilarious that our fuel planning information is in a great format that makes it real easy to figure out how much gas you'll burn, how long each leg will take, etc. etc., but the NOTAMs are a huge mess of characters. Or put another way, try to read your post like this...

The formatting is bad,but you can make it easier.For example,for NOTAMS applying to approaches,the type of approach is near the beginning.RNAV,ILS,NBD,etc.Skip the ones you're not going to do.Mark ones that may apply so you can find them easily if needed.At the beginning of the day/trip I'll check NOTAMS for all airports that we are going to.Mostly they don't affect us,but if I see any that do then I'll make a note of it.Then when actually doing the leg,I review the list to see if anything changed.There is a difference between going quickly and rushing.You should never let yourself get rushed,regardless of what the captain is doing.As Doug said, if your chief pilot is worth anything,you'll never hear a word about it.
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If your eyes don't cringe, they should. Your eyes SHOULD be looking for all the spaces and line breaks I took out. Formatting means a ton in finding information quickly and easy, as does highlighting, which is why I've always got a highlighter with me. That way when things start moving quickly I can find information I need quickly instead of hunting and pecking for what I need with no formatting.
 
Doug Taylor said:
It really depends though.

Comair got cited for an extraordinary amount of NOTAMS, many of which weren't pertinent to the flight which impeded the crew from catching the important ones about the lighting and runway closures at Bluegrass.

Nonetheless, if there's a problem, I'd be on the telephone to my ALPA safety chairman about the issue like yesterday. That's what your dues are going for and that's why the chairman volunteered for that position.

I'd even file a NASA ASRS report as well.
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Bingo, and THIS is why things get lost in the shuffle.
 
Seriously though. Keep a copy of the NOTAMS, write down your concerns with the formatting and send it to ALPA safety.

If he doesn't respond, recall his ass.
 
I look at the NOTAMS every flight. Pretty much everyone at our outfit does.

When I was a commuter guy, I never really cared about the schedule...it went out the window after the first flight of the day anyway. It was impossible to maintain. It was common for the chief pilot to question captains about delays...but they never did anything about it. Heck, when those guys went out to fly...the system was screwed up worse than when a full time line guy was flying.

At the commuter, a dispatcher once questioned me about taking on more fuel. The next day the "head" of the dispatch department came to find me in the training department and went off on me for taking on more fuel. I listened to his rant quietly, calmly gave my reasoning. The president of the company happened to be in the hallway listening to this conversation.

The next week...the guy was no longer with the company.

Those dispatchers weren't worth crap. They took a six week course and that was all they knew about aviation. Then went out and tried to dispatch airplanes. I could find inadequacies in every single dispatch release. Whatever.
 
If you guys didn't know...the FAA will be reformatting the NOTAM system in the next year. Getting rid of L NOTAMS alltogether and making some other changes.
 
RE: Skyway

Was it Tevin or the balding guy that'd spray his scalp with dye?
 
Doug Taylor said:
RE: Skyway

Was it Tevin or the balding guy that'd spray his scalp with dye?
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I can't remember. They brought this guy in after the other guy went to Midwest Express. He was learning as he was going. Unfortunately, he was going more than he was learning. I think you were gone by then.

A dispatcher is supposed to reduce a captain's workload...not add to it.
 
I agree 100% about the formatting being absolutely HORRIBLE!!! I had a packet of NOTAM's that was at least 15 pages long the other day and 99% of them were all completely useless. It was by shear luck that I noticed a missed approach procedure change buried in there. If they don't find a way to condense the stuff to a more reasonable outline, I think more and more people will continue to miss important changes unfortunately.
 
S'actly.

I've been pretty happy with "ours" so far, just a couple of 'em that needed to have a talking to by the captain, but for the most part over the last 10 years they've done a great job.

I remember wrestling with the balding/scalp-dye guy when I was a new captain when he tried to send me MKE-IND with 400 lbs of fuel.

I walked in, handed him the release and asked, "Hey, Uhh, what's wrong with this fuel load?"

"That's what the computer said".

"If we're burning 800 lbs/hr of fuel and I'm flying 85 minutes, would you like me to land in SBN for gas?"

"What do you want?"

"More gas"

Meanwhile, the other dispatcher (who didn't get along with him) was almost in tears he was laughing so hard.

I could have handled it differently and in retrospect that was unprofessional of me, but you know I was quite the hot head during my tenure at Skyway.
 
FDC 7/4466 SFO FI/T SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL, SAN FRANCISCO, CA.
RNAV GPS Z RWY 28R, AMDT 2A...
ALTERNATE MINIMUMS
CAT D 1200-3.
ALL OTHER DATA REMAINS AS PUBLISHED.

USD 06/159 SFO REBAS THREE DEPARTURENOTE...
RWY 28L/R, FOR OBSTACLE CLEARANCE A MINIMUM CLIMB
OF 449 FEET PER NM TO 2100 IS REQUIRED.

USD 05/025 SFO EUGEN FIVE DEPARTURE...
NOTE RWY 1L/R, FOR OBSTACLE CLEARANCE A MINIMUM CLIMB OF 233 FEET
PER NM TO 2500 FEET IS REQUIRED

USD 03/107 SFO SHORLINE ONE DEPARTURE...
RWY 28L/R, FOR OBSTACLE CLEARANCE A MINIMUM OF 499 FEET PER NM TO
2100 FEET IS REQUIRED.
LINDEN TRANSITION CLIMB VIA OAK R-040 AND LIN R-240 TO LIN VORTAC.
CROSS OAK R-040 8 DME FIX AT OR ABOVE 7000. THENCE VIA ASSIGNED
ROUTE .
ALL OTHER DATA REMAINS AS PUBLISHED.
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There are a few of ours from a release. They could be formatted better, but I navigate them pretty easily.
 
jtrain609 said:
Not always possible when your company doesn't give you the time to do your job when you're flying turboprop routes at jet speeds. When you're blocked at 30 minutes for a flight and you're sending the in range while passing through 10,000' and briefing the approach before you get to cruise and you just got shoved off the gate 10 minutes after getting the paperwork, trying to catch everything on 20 pages of paper (after of course making sure everything is legal, such as your alternate etc.) is nearly impossible.
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God forbid we should be a little proactive and maybe spend a few minutes at the hotel looking at NOTAMs for the next day's flying while waiting for that porn download.... Whether it's in the hotel or at the gate, it's still on your time, so what's the diff?
 
Ralgha said:
There are a few of ours from a release. They could be formatted better, but I navigate them pretty easily.
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I wish ours looked like that. I'd say for the most part ours will look like this...

FDC 7/4466 SFO FI/T KSFO
RNAV GPS Z RWY 28R, AMDT 2A...
ALTERNATE MINIMUMS CAT D 1200-3. ALL OTHER DATA REMAINS AS PUBLISHED.
USD 06/159 SFO REBAS THREE DEPARTURE RWY 28L/R, FOR OBSTACLE CLEARANCE A MINIMUM CLIMB OF 449 FEET PER NM TO 2100 IS REQUIRED.
USD 05/025 SFO EUGEN FIVE DEPARTURE NOTE RWY 1L/R, FOR OBSTACLE CLEARANCE A MINIMUM CLIMB OF 233 FEET PER NM TO 2500 FEET IS REQUIRED
USD 03/107 SFO SHORLINE ONE DEPARTURE RWY 28L/R, FOR OBSTACLE CLEARANCE A MINIMUM OF 499 FEET PER NM TO 2100 FEET IS REQUIRED.
LINDEN TRANSITION CLIMB VIA OAK R-040 AND LIN R-240 TO LIN VORTAC.
CROSS OAK R-040 8 DME FIX AT OR ABOVE 7000. THENCE VIA ASSIGNED
ROUTE .
ALL OTHER DATA REMAINS AS PUBLISHED.

When it's formatted like this the only way of knowing that you are looking at the next NOTAM is the USD to start the sentence.
 
aloft said:
God forbid we should be a little proactive and maybe spend a few minutes at the hotel looking at NOTAMs for the next day's flying while waiting for that porn download.... Whether it's in the hotel or at the gate, it's still on your time, so what's the diff?
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Because unlike your flights, my NOTAMs come from the company on my release paperwork.

EDIT: And for that matter, when you're on reserve you don't exactly always know where you're going, or you could get rerouted, extended, etc. etc.
 
Lots.

First, you need an internet connection, your company may or may not have an agreement with the hotel for free wireless.

Secondly, the hotel's for rest, not digging through notams.

Also, in my opinion (didn't say it was testament), it's your dispatchers job to make sure you get all relevant and pertinent information for the flight because his license is on the line as well. It's your job to make sure it's complete and the information disseminated.
 
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