It seems that chicago center is now required to read the entire notam file to anyone landing anywhere in their airspace when the tower is closed. I hear the same poor starchecker going in to Peoria every night get the same fifteen tower light outages. I've mentioned to them that it's sort of part of our jobs to check NOTAMs. Apparently it comes from "on high". Your tax dollars at work.
We are having the same conversation/issues over at our Union/NATCA website right now.
IE
YOU GOTTA BE F'kn kiddin me. You know how many twr lgts we got out... "N123, cleard drct YRK, hold NE on V493, expect further clearance at 1-6-0-0 Zulu, advise when ready to copy notams." Ohhhh, this is gonna take a while.
Who else is being told to issue NOTAMS to pilots who says they have the NOTAMS at an airport and, more specifically to issue tower light outages to all a/c on visual approaches. ZOB does, who else.
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ZFW got told to issue'em all...unless the airport has an ATIS and the pilot reports having the current ATIS. Most people are asking if the pilots have the NOTAMs and then, when they say yes, ignoring it. Problem is, someone is gonna get hung for it...a NOTAM comes out and doesn't get issued and Joe Sixpack plows into a tower...
Before it was the pilot's fault, now we got that too. Heck, if we issue a crossing restriction that a pilot can't make because it's "unreasonable"...it's a deal, not a pilot deviation (even if the pilot accepts the clearance), at ZFW per our latest crap in the R & I.
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Total XXXXX! I'm sure it's because pilots can no longer reach a local inflight FSS for local NOTAMS. One more gap we have to fill so Lockmart can collect on a big f'ing contract! Ok National...this **** is getting way tooooo rediculous! Are we even attempting to fight back on this BS?
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Actually... this has been a bit of a pet peeve of mine for some time, because someone somewhere is going to chomp a big fat one because of it.
The NOTAM system is kind of dicked up, and if a pilot gets a briefing from a distant FSS they might not get all the local NOTAMs... but they THINK they have all the NOTAMs.
So the center guy says "do you have all the NOTAMS for XXX airport" and the a/c pilot says "yes" and then he drives his plane into an unlit tower or a hole in a taxiway or something, and you know that somehow Laura Brown will be blaming the controller and NATCA.
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Yet another reason why we need to slow things down and verify that they do indeed have ALL of the NOTAMs, and if it takes a ton of time and we can't work enough traffic, too goddamn bad- it's the agency's problem and they need to work it out.
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We work at least a dozen uncontrolled/untowered airports and we don't ask ANY aircraft landing at them if they have all the notams. That is a pilots preflight requirement and not a controller responsibility, how can that possibly get turned around to us. Why do you even need to ask them?
On a side note, the number of A/C we are getting just flying through VFR not talking to anyone, is really going up.We work intensive NAVY student pilot training and you are literally risking your life flying through our airspace. Most of these we think are getting ready for the eventual day when it will cost them to talk to us so they are just going it alone now.
We must stick to our guns, If they are supposed to call Lockmart FSS for something.... make em do it even if they get delayed... nothing will happen if we keep taking up the slack for these people.
I really don't care for them saying Lockheed Flight Service either when they answer the lines instead of Ft. Worth Flight Service.
Could just be a short leap real soon to Boeing Corpus Christi Approach, or Boeing Regional Approach, or Lockheed Atlanta Approach.