Авиационные извещения NOTAM: Суть, проблемы и реформирование системы.

Aviation notice of potential flight hazards

A NOTAM (Notice to Airmen, Notice to Air Men, Notice to Airmanor Notice to Air Missions) is a notice filed with an aviation authority to alert aircraft pilots of potential hazards along a flight route or at a location that could affect the flight. NOTAMs are notices or advisories that contain information concerning the establishment, conditions or change in any aeronautical facility, service, procedure or hazard, the timely knowledge of which may be essential to personnel and systems concerned with flight operations. NOTAMs are created and transmitted by government agencies and airport operators under guidelines specified by Annex 15: Aeronautical Information Services of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (CICA). A NOTAM is filed with an aviation authority to alert aircraft pilots of any hazards en route or at a specific location, or Flight Information Region. The authority, in turn, provides a means of disseminating relevant NOTAMs to pilots.

The acronym NOTAM came into common use following the ratification of the CICA, which came into effect on 4 April 1947, although early recorded use of the "Notice to Airmen" heading can be found in Flight International magazine in the UK. Notices to airmen were normally published in a regular publication by each country's air authorities, as in the UK. Several developments and amendments to the CICA have resulted in the more automated system available today. At some point in the past, the NOTAM system became web aware. In July 2017, Air Canada Flight 759 nearly crashed into four other airliners as it attempted to land on a San Francisco taxiway misidentified as a runway: the adjacent runway was closed, but the information was buried in the NOTAM. As a consequence, in September 2018, from the findings during its investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) stated NOTAMs were unintelligible and ignored and recommended a more effective information presentation for better relevance. NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt described NOTAMs as "a bunch of garbage that nobody pays any attention to". This led to an initiative of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to reform the NOTAM system. In early 2014 Russia occupied Crimea and as part of the takeover Russia issued a newly invented code, URFV to cover the Crimean airspace. The Ukrainian air controller has been subjugated to issue NOTAMs under the UKFV code, basically a verbatim repeater. As a result all the UKFV NOTAMs advising about this area affix this note:

The following describes ICAO NOTAMs. NOTAMs are published using all upper case letters. Some countries, such as the United States, may diverge from the following ICAO standards. The first line contains NOTAM identification (series, sequence number, and year of issue), the type of operation (NEW, REPLACE, or CANCEL), as well as a reference to a previously issued NOTAM (for NOTAMR and NOTAMC only). The "Q" line holds information about whom the NOTAM affects, along with a basic NOTAM description. This line can be encoded/decoded from tables defined by ICAO. This allows NOTAMs to be displayed electronically. The "A" line is the ICAO code of the affected aerodrome or FIR for the NOTAM. The area of influence of the NOTAM can be several hundred kilometers from the originating aerodrome. The "B" line contains the start date and time, and the "C" line contains the finish date and time of the NOTAM. Fields "B" and "C" are in the format YYMMDDhhmm, with times given in Universal Co ordinated Time, also known as UTC or Zulu time. Sometimes a "D" line may be present. This gives a miscellaneous diurnal time for the NOTAM if the hours of effect are less than 24 hours a day, e. g., parachute dropping exercises tend to occur for short periods of a few hours during the day, but may be repeated over many days. The "E" line is the full NOTAM description. It is in English but can be heavily abbreviated. These abbreviations can be encoded/decoded by tables defined by ICAO. When present, "F" and "G" lines detail the height/altitude restrictions of the NOTAM. Typically SFC means surface height or ground level, and UNL is unlimited height. Other heights are given in feet, flight level, or a combination of the two.

On 11 January 2023, the US NOTAM system failed, which grounded all domestic flights until 9:00 AM EST (UTC 5) the same day.