The meeting was called by John Gentleman, Manager, Aeronautical Charts and Data at the Directorate of Airspace Policy of the CAA, who was also the Chairman.

The main purpose of the meeting was to consider a paper produced by Russell Howton and Mike Cross suggesting improvements to the method of disseminating NOTAM introduced in August 2002 by UK AIS.

The attendees included representatives from the CAA, NATS and a number of users of AIS services.

The Paper proposed three main actions:-

1. Fix the UK AIS Website so that it performs as designed.
2. Provide a standardised FIR briefing suitable for display on self-briefing boards at aerodromes.
3. Provide a raw data download which would enable pilots to use third-party software to select and present NOTAM information in a form that would suit their own requirements.

Of these, items 1. and 2. have been agreed and AIS have been instructed to do what is required to achieve them.

NATS and AIS have expressed some reservations on item 3, citing potential liability issues and a requirement to consult with other interested parties. CAA/DAP have agreed to put the liability issue to the CAA Legal Department for an opinion.

The following pages contain the Agenda for the meeting, a list of those who attended and an account of the discussion that took place.

We feel that his was a good result that has the potential to result in a substantial improvement in Flight Safety.

18 November 2002

Rod Bailes-Brown

Michael Cross

Chris Gould

Paul Handover

Russell Howton

Andrew Roch

Note:- Martin Robinson of AOPA has not yet been able to agree this report. Amendments may therefore arise following his response.

1. Chairman’s opening remarks – John Gentleman
2. Approval of the agenda
3. AIS ADIM current situation report – Phil Bate
4. General Aviation Department (GAD) view of ADIMS - Rod Dean
5. Discussion of the document UK AIS Website "Suggestions for Improvement"– Russell Howton & Michael Cross.
6. Any other business
7. Next meeting

JOHN GENTLEMAN

Manager ACD

Directorate of Airspace

Civil Aviation Authority

The meeting was held at the Control Tower Building, Heathrow Airport at 10:30 on 15 November 2002

John Gentleman - CAA DAP (Chairman)

Rod Dean – Head of GA Department, CAA SRG

Chris Gould - CAA On Track Project, GA Representative

Russell Howton, Mike Cross, Rod Bailes-Brown, Andrew Roch – GA User Representatives

Martin Robinson – CEO AOPA

Paul Handover, MD. Aviation Briefing Ltd (AvBrief)

Phil Bate - Manager UK AIS

Steve Harben - Head of Data Management, AIS

Barry Davidson – AIS Operations Support and QA Officer

Doug Ferguson - AIS Operations Support and Training Officer

Lesley Clayton – AIS Supervisor

John Gentleman explained the background structure behind AIS. On privatisation (about 2 years ago) there was a split in responsibility for Policy and Provision. CAA DAP are responsible for formulating policy, NATS/AIS are responsible for provision of the AIS service.

The Website went live on 19 August 2002 and on 17 September there was a formal letter from DAP to NATS detailing 17 separate issues that DAP required NATS to action. The CAA require all the fixes and major changes to be up and running by the Spring - i.e. mid March at the latest.

Phil Bate then explained progress so far. He said that lessons have been learnt following the implementation of the new system. He went into no detail on the 17 points raised by DAP but said that they had been concentrating on improving the coding of the underlying data and on stability and performance issues. Improving the coding had resulted in less information being included in Narrow Route Briefings that was not relevant to the intended flight. A software upgrade carried out on 6 November had resulted in improved speed and reliability, and the servers would now automatically re-boot without the need for manual intervention in the event of a crash.

Rod Dean emphasised the legal requirement for the information to be made available. He was looking for ease of access, a high degree of reliability, and he wanted the usability of the system to be improved considerably.

Chris Gould said that he had done a survey of flying training organisation and found that of those surveyed one was still using the A1/A8 bulletins because it was based at an aerodrome with a MARS terminal, two were using AvBrief and the remainder were using the AIS website. These schools were managing to cope because they had operations/administrative staff who were sorting out a local area brief but he felt that there was very little provision for other pilots who were operating from the aerodrome outside of the training school environment.

Rod Bailes-Brown said that a lot of small GA fields and Microlight strips had stopped listing Notams on their notice boards and tended not to have a PC available for pilots to use.

Russell Howton and Mike Cross had prepared a paper containing suggestions on improvements to the UK AIS Website. This had been passed to AIS and other interested parties during week commencing 21 October.

Mike Cross outlined the three point plan:-

1. Fix what is there so that it works as intended.
2. Provide a downloadable printable Area Briefing for display on aerodrome self-briefing boards.
3. Provide a raw data download so that third-party filtering and display software such as NotamPlot and NotamPro could be used.

Mike Cross confirmed that the software upgrade of 6 November appeared to have achieved a marked improvement in speed and reliability but also pointed out that other improvements to the site had been mainly cosmetic rather than substantive.

There had been minor changes to defaults and Help documents and FAQ’s had been produced and updated.

Version 1 of the Help File had been produced on 12 September but contained erroneous instructions that did not work and this was not corrected until Version 2 on 25 October.

Discussion then moved on to Annex A – Key Problems of the Website as implemented.

Phil Bate said they had hoped to announce the implementation of a fax-back bulletin service but they had found in testing that the software supplied by Thales IS would not work to a significant number of fax machines. He said that the suggestion of mounting the static data on a separate server had been considered but that any decision was for NATS/AIS.

Roger Budgen explained that what was to be delivered was a policy matter, and so the responsibility of DAP; the methods by which delivery was achieved were a decision for NATS/AIS.

Rod Bailes-Brown pointed out that there was an International Standard for fax compatibility, and had been for a number of years and passed the details to Steve Harben.

It was agreed that the Narrow Route Briefing worked reasonably well for pilots or flights operating on a "point to point" basis

It was agreed that the Route Briefing was of limited use in that it included everything that was on an Area Briefing with the exception that the user could choose which aerodromes he wanted displayed.

Rod Dean and Chris Gould proposed that the Area Briefing should be made to work so that it could be used to provide a briefing for an area based on a user-selectable radius around a fixed point such as an airfield. This was generally agreed.

Doug Ferguson confirmed that there were a number of required fields that appeared to have no influence on the result.

Rod Bailes-Brown suggested that if the screen included the fields in order to maintain a uniform look and feel then these fields should not be "required" and should be "greyed out" so that they did not require or accept any input.

Mike Cross pointed out that height filtering appeared not to be working and this was agreed by Doug Ferguson, who said that the problem had been passed to Thales IS.

All users agreed that the lack of a geographic sort was a major problem.

Phil Bate accepted the criticism and explained that a workshop was being arranged between AIS and Thales AIS to address issues. They did not yet have a date fixed but he expected it to take place before Christmas.

AIS were pressed to give a timeframe for the work to be carried out but said that they were unable at present to do so.

It was pointed out to them that they had been in possession of the proposals for some time and they should have been able to come to the meeting with some idea of timescale.

Mike Cross asked Phil Bate what discussions had taken place between AIS and Thales IS with regard to the proposals. Phil Bate said that that was a matter for the Project Manager but he was not aware of any formal requests to Thales IS to carry out any investigation of the proposals.

Mike Cross pointed out that a copy of the proposals had been passed by him to Thales IS well in advance of the meeting.

John Gentleman said that he required NATS/AIS to consult with Thales IS and provide a time-scale for the improvements.

Discussion then moved on to Annex C (Raw Data Download) at the request of Roger Budgen who advised that he would have to leave the meeting by 12:30.

Mike Cross outlined the case for the download. He explained that programs such as NotamPlot and NotamPro had gathered a good deal of support from users and that the user group had received very strong feedback from users who wanted the information to be made available so that these programs could work again.

Roger Budgen said that NATS were very concerned about Liability issues if the data were misused.

Mike Cross pointed out that under the ANO it was the pilot’s responsibility to ensure that he was adequately briefed. The responsibility was solely on him and it was therefore not up to anyone else to interfere in his choice of method. Pilots were licensed and were therefore within the regulatory framework. The raw data was already available from other legitimate foreign NOTAM offices. Would he prefer UK pilots to use data from the UK NOTAM office or from foreign sources?

Paul Handover stated that AvBrief have no objection to the release of raw data to the
pilot community. However the availability of raw data to users and third party providers should either be under an approval process or not. Having a process that required some data users to be approved and some not would not be supported by AvBrief.

AvBrief would be pleased to offer raw Notam data from its own servers if their contract with UK AIS supported this.

Paul Handover asked Phil Bate for his view on this and Phil Bate replied that he would not be comfortable with the release of the raw data.

AvBrief believe that there is a strong positive safety case for the processing of raw Notam data under an approval process but that the approval process should not be restricted to commercial 3rd party providers.

Mike Cross suggested that "approval" would imply liability for failure and that it was therefore unlikely that the CAA or NATS would use that terminology. He pointed out that Notamplot and NotamPro had gained widespread acceptance in the user community and that no one had produced a safety case suggesting any shortcomings in either product.

Phil Bate said that he did not support the release of raw data.

Roger Budgen was pressed by John Gentleman. If the liability issue were cleared up would NATS support the release of raw data?

Roger Budgen stated that there were other interested parties who would need to be consulted. The people present at the meeting did not represent all of the users of the information. Several people asked him who the "other interested parties" were but he would not elaborate. It was pointed out to him that some 32,000 PPL holders represented a significant proportion of '"other interested parties".

John Gentleman undertook to pass the problem to the CAA Legal Department for an opinion as to whether any liability could accrue to NATS if the raw data were made available.

Following this discussion Roger Budgen left the meeting.

Discussion was resumed after a break and moved on to Annex B (Outline Specification for a Self-Briefing Bulletin)

It was agreed that there was an urgent need for a standard briefing for display on notice boards at aerodromes. Doug Ferguson outlined a proposal that AIS had been working on but this was rejected as unsuitable because it did not have a geographical sort.

Andrew Roch said that a lot of Gliding Clubs operated from sites without telephone or power and so were reliant on downloaded information brought to the site by the Duty Instructor.

After some discussion it was agreed that the basic requirement was:-

A standardised bulletin for each UK FIR that would be a "single click download". The format, layout and content would not be selectable by the user so that the information would always be presented in the same way.

There would be a separate download of the aerodromes and of the en-route data.

Aerodromes would be sorted in alphabetic order of aerodrome name as recorded in the AIP.

En-route information would be sorted in geographic order of ascending latitude where the radius of influence was relatively small. Information affecting a larger radius of influence or with no radius of influence would appear in a separate wide-area section. The cut-off point for the radius of influence would be determined at a later date following recommendations from AIS and trials.

All information would be included with none filtered out.

Identification and pagination would be required as outlined in the proposal.

It was generally agreed that these bulletins should be updated at 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 in line with Met Office briefings.

Rod Dean suggested that this was the single most important requirement and secured general agreement from user representatives.

Phil Bate said that he would bring it up at the proposed workshop but John Gentleman stated that there was no reason to wait and instructed that the requirement should be passed to Thales IS as soon as possible, without waiting.

Discussion then moved on to Annex D (Future Development). Mike Cross raised the point that there were some activities being Notammed which should not be if the guidance in CAP 493, the Manual of Air Traffic Services were followed.

Barry Davidson pointed out that CAP 493 was applicable to Air Traffic Units but not to AIS, who work to the Standards and Recommended practices laid down in ICAO Doc Annex 15 and ICAO Doc 8126, and the entry in MATS Part 1 was there for the guidance of ATSUs. Mike Cross responded that the same wording was present in Annex 15.

In reply to a question on how long NOTAM should be in force before being incorporated in the AIP Barry Davidson advised that 90 days were required.

He also pointed out that there were six permanent NOTAM that could not be incorporated into the AIP because they did not fit into ICAO categories. These refer to kite flying for Birds of Prey training and Radiosondes and Kites at Somerton IOW.

John Gentleman advised that DAP would be issuing guidance to promulgators, probably in the form of an AIC in an effort to reduce inappropriate use of the NOTAM process.

Barry Davidson stated that the existing NOTAM series lettering was going to be changed and that the result should be some reduction in the duplication of U Series (Military) with other series.

Annex E (minor problems requiring attention) was taken as read.

It was suggested that the majority of the amendments to the system should be completed before the start of the GA recreational flying season in Mar 2003. A meeting to monitor progress would need to be held before then and it was agreed that it should be held in Jan 2003 at a date to be arranged.