Waypoints

Although AOPA Pilot columnist Mark Twombly and I had lots of things we wanted to discuss over a recent lunch, the conversation quickly turned to flying — what else? At one point, about the time I was splattering marinara sauce on my necktie, he began describing his latest aviation adventure out of his home base at Kansas City Downtown Airport. Without pause, Mark commented that he'd requested and received a clearance through the Kansas City Class B airspace as he headed south to his destination.

He then went on with his tale; but what caught my attention was the fact that throughout the conversation, he never hesitated in using the airspace reclassification terminology — descriptors that two years ago almost certainly would have been accompanied by either some complaint about the airspace reclassification effort or at least a bit of vernacular fumbling. As have most pilots, Mark has climbed the reclassification learning curve.

Likewise, during a recent VFR flight in the Washington, D.C., area, I found myself confidently asking Dulles Approach Control for a clearance through the Washington Class B area. (I was confident in my phraseology, not that I would get the clearance, but that's another column.) I've paid particular attention to other ATC communications lately and have heard almost no pilots or controllers reverting to TCA/ARSA mode.

For a few months after the reclassification went into effect in September 1993, I heard dozens of cases where pilots (including yours truly) struggled for the right airspeak or simply forgot and asked to transit the TCA. A few controllers seemed to delight in publicly correcting pilots. Others simply ignored the faux pas and gently reminded the pilot by issuing a clearance through "the Class B." Of course, I heard more than one pilot quickly remonstrate controllers who also fell victim to the change in parlance.

So, despite all the hand wringing and angst that surrounded the change to the international airspace terminology standard, we all seemed to have survived. In fact, we're all probably a little smarter about airspace after having been forced to revisit a subject that most of us hadn't studied since private pilot ground school. New pilots, of course, don't know the difference. To them the term airport radar service area is as arcane as Class C was to those of us who had learned the old system.

An easy parallel can be drawn between the airspace reclassification and the ongoing effort to convert weather observations and forecasting to the international standard of METARs and TAFs. As everyone except maybe Rip Van Pilot knows by now, the change to the new format of reporting terminal forecasts and surface observations is scheduled to become effective in June. Don't throw out your old weather decoder yet, though. The implementation date has already slipped several times and it is likely to be pushed back yet again.

As with the shift in airspace terminology, pilots are understandably frustrated with the changes. We get no benefit from the change; our weather forecasts won't be any more accurate or timely, our airplanes won't go any faster, and it won't cost us any less to fly.

Bill Kershner, the famed author, flight instructor, and frequent contributor to Pilot's "New Pilot" section, shared his frustration with the new weather formats in a recent letter. "Some of the abbreviations are interesting: For instance, FU is for smoke, the French word for fumee. But looking further into my French-English dictionary, I see that FU could also be an abbreviation of the French word fumier, which means manure. One would wonder when looking at the destination weather whether the airplane would be flown into smoke or something else.

"BR is the abbreviation for 'brouillard,' or fog. I had a little trouble with this, having a slight confusion between 'brouillard,' and 'bouillon,' which everybody knows is a broth. I thought of 'breezy' or 'brake' (is the braking action good or bad?)."

Later in his letter, Kershner makes the point that the reason for these changes is for international standardization of weather reporting. "But," Kershner reminds us, "the United States would not have to use meters or kilometers, but would be allowed to stick with feet and miles. So what's the point of millions of dollars to go to a different reporting system...that does only a half job of conversion?

"I recently went to a fly-in breakfast at Winchester, Tennessee (population 6,500)," Kershner continues, "where 140 airplanes landed and took off in a 2.5-hour period. That's probably more general aviation movements than in all the countries of Europe (or maybe the rest of the world) during that time period."

Kershner is probably right about that. But, despite what's been bandied about over here, the problem isn't a bunch of European countries with fewer total GA aircraft than we have in Tennessee foisting their will upon the United States.

In reality, GA pilots in Europe don't like the idea of having to learn new concepts either, according to Steve Brown, AOPA senior vice president of Government and Technical Affairs and secretary general of the International Council of Aircraft Owner and Pilot Associations. Most countries outside North America have been using a format similar to METAR/TAF for about a decade, but some relatively minor changes are in store for them as well. "The Europeans hate the changes; they see it as Europe caving in to North America. And they don't like that at all," Brown says.

Actually, it's other users of weather data from all parts of the world, including the United States, who have a need to receive the data in one common format. Among those backing the change are the world's meteorologists, including the commercial broadcast market, the military, commercial air transport, agriculture, the travel industry, and maritime operators. In this global perspective, the world's general aviation impact is tiny indeed. To those industries, the change to one international standard means a great simplification in the way they do business. That simplification equates to a reduction in costs of enormous proportions — a fact that these giant industries have used to force the changes through their respective governments over the course of 10 years.

In an effort to ease the changes for the U.S. aviation industry (including general aviation), the FAA has agreed to continue using feet and miles in the forecasts and observations, far more significant changes than will be provided to any other segment.

The move to the weather reporting standardization has been in the works for more than a decade. Championing the cause have been the members of the World Meteorological Organization, the part of the United Nations that sets international meteorological standards. The National Weather Service is the primary U.S. representative to WMO.

With changes in technology and world politics, the globalization of weather reporting should come as no surprise. Weather forecasts are no longer a local product. Data from local regions is fed into supercomputers that develop forecasts for entire continents.

General aviation needn't sit idly by and do nothing, though. Instead, we should use this as an opportunity to ensure that the aviation weather products we need on a daily basis are available in the best possible way. And for many pilots, that means plain language. Now is the time to rally for the elimination of all the mysterious abbreviations that plague every new pilot and even many of us who have been flying for decades.

Sure, I can wade through most everyday SAs (SA means surface observation — go figure) and FTs (FT is terminal forecast; shouldn't that be TF?). But I don't remember the last time I needed to know that "K" stands for smoke and "A" equals hail, as it does in the current formats. And I confess to stumbling from time to time when I run across an FT that says "OCNL C8X1SW." Give me a couple of minutes and I can tell you that you can expect an occasional ceiling 800 feet, sky obscured, visibility 1 statute mile in snowshowers.

We might use the impending change to question why visibility is measured in statute miles while wind speeds are in knots. And why are wind directions figured on true north instead of magnetic?

With the demise of the teletype and the advent of modern computers, we no longer need obscure abbreviations. Instead, computers can easily convert the abbreviations into plain-language products that any pilot can understand. Such products are currently available on a voluntary basis from both DUAT vendors and many commercial weather information providers. But, thanks to stringent FAA requirements, the amount of data that comes streaming out with a plain-language forecast boggles the mind. The DUAT contractors ought to be free to package the data in a more user- friendly format.

Data delivered any other way is a lot of fumier.