Checkride

Thoughts on information dissemination

"Submitted for your approval..." was a cryptic prelude for untold thousands of 1960s teens as television producer Rod Serling began episode after episode of his series called The Twilight Zone. A half-century later, the very name Twilight Zone can evoke a sense of weirdness and awe. Frustrated pilot applicants have referred to information gone missing or notes that have disappeared as having slid from normal aviation channels to the Twilight Zone. Included often in this fifth dimension would be procedures to which pilots adhere without a full knowledge of why. Sometimes, these procedures appear in a publication known as Notices to Airmen Domestic/International.

Pity the unfortunate pilot applicant whose flight test includes an impromptu diversion to an unplanned-for airfield, only to discover upon arrival that some impossibly placed yellow cloth forms a foreboding X on each end of the only available runway. Looking to the left seat, an inscrutable pilot examiner casts a devilish glance at the applicant, silently asking, Why did you not know this about a local airport?

Applicants' prayers often seem fulfilled when designated pilot examiners (DPEs) do not ask why a procedure or process is done as the applicant has performed it. Often, pilot examiners simply let the performance speak for the assumed knowledge, presuming that the applicant knows that these procedures may appear in the Notices to Airmen Domestic/International.

Generally, according to a spectrum of pilot examiners, most pilot applicants understand that notices to airmen (generically called notams) exist because of some event or condition occurring too recently to be published on charts or in other routine sources of pilot information. If, during your practical test, you intend to answer a notam question with those words or similar, you should realize that your DPE may decide to probe more deeply. The operative word is "may."

As this article is being written in mid-2007, there seems to be consensus among pilots that the notam system itself is flawed, and this opinion appears to exist within the community of flight instructors as well. Add to this the additional difficulties involved in contacting a flight service station (FSS) briefer, and when you take your checkride, you may face unusual challenges in meeting your examiner's testing objectives with regard to notam use. As your checkride approaches you must remember you are solely responsible for and are the final authority as to the operation of your aircraft. Therefore, do not be intimidated by the system.

There are several avenues of information that allow one to obtain notams. There are online sources of information essential to pilots, including notams. Among these is the long-lived Direct User Terminal Access Service, or DUATS. Other sources include Weather Services International, Navtech, Kavouras, and Data Transmission Network. Also, members of organizations like AOPA have a galaxy of benefits open to their use. You should note, though, that online services carry an advisory that because conditions change rapidly, pilots should obtain the latest notams from flight service or DUATS immediately before a flight.

Different services will have similarly worded precautionary statements that place the responsibility of notam-gathering on the pilot. Self-briefing has its challenges as well. Contractions that commonly appear in notams often fail to have unique meanings, thus a pilot applicant must surmise the context. For example, "BC" means "back course" in a notam, but it means "patches" in a routine aviation weather report. "BLO" means "blowing" in a weather report, but means "below" in a notam. Since the majority of communicating symbols in a notam are abbreviations instead of standard language words, you must be able to mentally shift your thinking quickly.

Some notices to airmen are conveniently placed on the automatic terminal information service (ATIS), yet applicants still conduct their checkride flights oblivious to the information. This is often a result of poor ATIS technique. If you notice your habit is to listen to the runway and weather information portion of ATIS, then select the next frequency you expect to use having not heard the entirety of the ATIS at that moment, you have adopted a hazardous technique. Relax. Listen to the complete ATIS. That portion telling you about the closed taxiway, the unlit tower near the airport, a navaid shutdown for a given time period--it is important. This is a notam.

Regarding what is probably the most common lack of knowledge among pilot applicants regarding notams is the fact that these are published in book form as mentioned above. Very few applicants (and even some flight instructors) seem to recall having ever seen said book, or the occasionally confusing entries contained therein.

One example might be a pilot flying from Alaska's Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Such a pilot may notice what might appear to be routine taxi-into-position and hold (TIPH) operations at Runway 32 and Taxiway Kilo between the hours of sunset and sunrise. Taxi-into-position-and-hold procedures are a tool used by air traffic control to expedite the movement of aircraft on an airport--but it is not authorized for intersection departures between the hours of sunset and sunrise. Anchorage Tower, according to page 4-A and H-10 of the Notices to Airmen that was valid between November 23 and December 21, 2006, operates under a waiver that permits these operations on Runway 32 at Taxiway Kilo between the hours of sunset and sunrise under specified conditions.

A pilot examiner would be within his authority to ask if taxi into position and hold may be used from another point on the airfield. It is unlikely that any examiner would ask this of a private pilot applicant, but a commercial or airline transport pilot applicant--or certificated flight instructor candidate--should certainly be prepared for such.

Why? Many notams survive long enough to be published in the voluminous Notices To Airman Domestic/International. Those notams are not relayed by a briefer unless the pilot being briefed requests them. That fact confuses applicants of every stripe, from private pilot to instructor.

Notices to airmen continue to be among pilot applicants' testing fears. Our Byzantine system of notam dissemination; its cumbersome, confusing contractions that occasionally defy interpretation; and other issues make flight instructors and students alike wonder why we use a system that was created for 1920s-era teletype machines.

The FAA's challenge is to determine how to implement changes to the system so that human factors are better served and technology is properly integrated without degrading safety in the interim. Your challenge as a pilot applicant is to know the system and use, as best as you can, that information that a modern Twilight Zone has submitted for your approval.

Dave Wilkerson is a designated pilot examiner, writer/photographer, and historian. He has been a certificated flight instructor since 1981 with approximately 2,000 hours of dual instruction, and is a single- and multiengine commercial-rated pilot.