[HN Gopher] Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage
___________________________________________________________________
Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage
Author : flerchin
Score : 177 points
Date : 2023-01-19 13:52 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov)
| Zaskoda wrote:
| Could it be the solar flare?
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2023/01/16/th...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We get something like ten of these a year.
| Zaskoda wrote:
| According to Tamitha Skov, right now is a particular intense
| solar storm: https://www.patreon.com/posts/77348743
| SamPatt wrote:
| Serious question: At what point does the failure of government
| services warrant the partial withholding of taxes?
|
| This isn't sufficient of course but when the FAA repeatedly
| demonstrates incompetence, when do we eventually just tell them
| no, you can't have any more of my money, you're obviously wasting
| it and making us worse off?
| dnadler wrote:
| That's basically the entire point of Congress
| advisedwang wrote:
| How does shutting down the FAA improve the situation? Then we
| would have no weather, NOTAM, ATC etc 24/7.
| mnd999 wrote:
| That's not how taxes work. You don't get to choose how the
| money is spent (other than indirectly, via elections).
|
| If you did you'd be a consumer, not a taxpayer.
| agomez314 wrote:
| Until the failure causes political embarrassment or change. It
| required the meltdown of healthcare.gov to kickstart the use of
| modern tooling and methodology in gov't IT.
| michaelmcdonald wrote:
| Is it them wasting money, or do they have a constrained budget
| with an ever growing number of responsibilities and scope? Do
| you think there are fewer planes in the air now then 30 years
| ago? 10 years ago?
| drstewart wrote:
| >Is it them wasting money, or do they have a constrained
| budget with an ever growing number of responsibilities and
| scope?
|
| Wow, it could be. Can you share the FAA's budget this year
| compared to 2019 so we can see how it's been constrained?
| SamPatt wrote:
| I wish my budget was so constrained.
|
| Have you looked at the numbers?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Have you looked at the numbers?
|
| Have you?
|
| https://theblogbyjavier.com/2020/01/02/aviation-safety-
| evolu...
|
| See the chart labeled "Evolution of accidents per million
| flights". Millions more flights, and a steady march towards
| zero deaths. We haven't had a commercial airliner crash in
| the US _for over a decade_.
|
| The FAA's numbers look _great_.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| From the governments point of view failure means they need more
| money, not less. Not paying taxes just means you get arrested,
| they don't have any incentive to fear you doing that.
| pc86 wrote:
| I don't think that's a serious question, but the serious answer
| is never, unless you're willing to go to jail or kill people to
| get away with it.
| ck2 wrote:
| Just swap civil services budget with military budget.
|
| Imagine what NASA would do in ten years with Pentagon's budget
| swapped.
| drstewart wrote:
| Done.
|
| NASA's budget is now $0 though, since the military budget all
| went to Medicare with nothing left to spare for anything
| else. Along with the FAA and every other government
| department.
| bulldog13 wrote:
| [flagged]
| nerdponx wrote:
| Citation needed?
| drstewart wrote:
| You need me to Google Medicare budget and defense budget
| for you?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)
|
| >In 2020, US federal government spending on Medicare was
| $776.2 billion.[3]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of
| _De...
|
| >Annual budget US$721.5 billion (FY2020)[2]
|
| Hopefully, I won't need a citation that $776 > $721
| nerdponx wrote:
| Your source doesn't support your assertion:
|
| > NASA's budget is now $0 though, since the military
| budget all went to Medicare with nothing left to spare
| for anything else. Along with the FAA and every other
| government department.
| blululu wrote:
| This does not back up the original claim in the slightest
| which was obviously a grotesque exaggeration. Please
| refrain from hyperbole and sarcasm - it damages the
| quality of the conversation.
| vaidhy wrote:
| So, US spends approximately $12,000 per beneficiary per
| year. Given the cost of medical expenses, this does not
| seem too large..
| Tool_of_Society wrote:
| Well the USA does spend the most per capita on health
| care.
|
| Meanwhile other first world nations pay about half that
| and get mostly better results...
| shmatt wrote:
| This is the conservative playbook. Cut funding until the entity
| can't run properly, then yell JEEZ GUYS YOU REALLY SUCK wHY
| DON'T WE SHUT YOU DOWN
|
| The previous president significantly cut the FAA's budget,
| maybe we're just seeing now how that affects us in the long
| term
| drstewart wrote:
| Presidents don't pass budgets, Congress does.
|
| There's a neat trick people do nowadays where people claim
| anything that's unsuccessful (usually government related) was
| either "sabotaged" or "set up to fail" as a way of absolving
| them of any failures. Literally impossible to criticize.
|
| Finally, the FAA's budget was $23 billion this year and $28
| billion last year due to pandemic / infra surpluses, nearly
| double what it was the last 4 years, where it remained flat
| (not cut as you say). So it's funny how 2 years of double
| funding can't get it back on track, but flat funding has
| caused it to fall apart in the same time period.
| SamPatt wrote:
| I'm not a conversative.
|
| Presidents don't pass budgets.
|
| FAA funding has increased, not decreased.
|
| I can criticize my government all I want. You're turning this
| into a political party thing when it's a government service
| failure.
| webdoodle wrote:
| It's the folks that hitch themselves to a political party
| narrative that are the most dangerous, because they can't
| decouple when the party fails them repeatedly. They start
| to make excuses, moving the goal posts, and white washing
| obvious corruption. They become so enamored in it, that
| they find people on the internet to harass, just so they
| can feel big and important for putting them in there place.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Presidents don't pass budgets.
|
| No, they propose, sign, use the veto threat to shape the
| legislative process on, and use various administrative
| powers and means to rearrange the actual spending resulting
| from them, but "passing" budgets is the name for a step in
| the middle of the process done by someone else.
|
| Not sure what your point is; the President is by a very
| wide margin the single most powerful actor in the shaping
| of both nominal budgets and actual federal spending.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Presidents propose budgets (the CBO even uses the term "the
| President's budget";
| https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58417), sign them into law,
| threaten Congress with vetos, and have _significant_
| influence over their party as a whole. Trump in particular
| was successful in drubbing opponents out of office; Liz
| Cheney went from #3 in House leadership to a pariah largely
| overnight.
| factsarelolz wrote:
| > Liz Cheney went from #3 in House leadership to a pariah
| largely overnight.
|
| Oh it's Trump fault Liz did what she did? Nope. Liz
| thought she'd make a name for herself, she did, and is
| reaping the results of her actions.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Whatever you think of her actions, her journey (and
| similar for a variety of other anti-Trump Republicans)
| illustrates the power a President can have over Congress.
| This has pretty clear implications for the budget
| process.
| butlerm wrote:
| Trump was not President at the time of the Liz Cheney
| leadership controversy, that was after he was out of
| office. Trump is not President anymore and no one should
| pretend that he is.
| drstewart wrote:
| This is all a lot of weasel words to avoid the fact that
| the President does not pass the budget, and their
| proposals bear little resemblance to what actually get
| passed.
|
| Liz Cheney is completely irrelevant here.
|
| Post FAA's ACTUAL BUDGET over the last 8 years and let us
| judge.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm not the one who made the budget assertion; you're mad
| at someone else.
|
| I'm just contesting the idea that the President has no
| power over the US Federal budget.
|
| (I'm of the general opinion that the FAA is fairly well
| funded, has been very effective at its mission, and could
| still do with some specific capital projects to modernize
| non-sexy stuff like NOTAM and METAR handling.)
| butlerm wrote:
| There is no US federal budget - not a binding one at any
| rate. The president recommends and Congress passes
| budgets for internal purposes, but they do not carry the
| force of law. The numbers that matter are how much
| Congress appropriates, and if Congress appropriates $X
| dollars for something the executive branch is expected to
| spend it, not second guess Congress and say we really
| didn't want to spend that money.
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There is no US federal budget - not a binding one at
| any rate.
|
| Yes there is.
|
| > The president recommends and Congress passes budgets
| for internal purposes
|
| This is simply false.
|
| > but they do not carry the force of law.
|
| Yes, budget bills, like other bills, have the force of
| law once passed and either signed by the President or
| vetoed and the President's veto overridden by both Houses
| (the President's budget proposals do not have the force
| of law, just like other unpassed legislative proposals.)
|
| > The numbers that matter are how much Congress
| appropriates
|
| "The budget" is just the aggregate of tax and
| appropriations bills (sometimes, there is an annual
| package entitled a "comprehensive" or "omnibus" budget
| bill that covers some tax policy and most or all of the
| annual appropriations, but that's rare, and even in that
| case there are typically continuous and multiyear
| appropriations and tax policies that are left untouched
| and outside of it, but which are considered part of the
| "budget" even though they are aren't part of the "budget
| bill"; more commonly, this doesn't occur.)
|
| > if Congress appropriates $X dollars for something the
| executive branch is expected to spend it, not second
| guess Congress and say we really didn't want to spend
| that money.
|
| While this is true, and more than just a soft
| expectation, since _Train v. City of New York_ and the
| Impoundment Control Act of 1974, it is not invariably the
| practice notwithstanding the expectation and the law
| (cf., the withholding of funds appropriated for Ukraine
| aid that was central to Trump's _first_ impeachment.)
| butlerm wrote:
| > budget bills, like other bills, have the force of law
| once passed
|
| First of all congress generally does not pass budget
| bills, they pass budget resolutions, and congressional
| resolutions are not submitted to the president for his
| signature and do not have the force of law.
|
| As far as budget bills (like the Budget Act of 1974) are
| concerned, it is impossible for a previous congress to
| pass laws that govern the actions of succeeding
| congresses in a binding fashion because such laws have
| the character of congressional rules not statutes, and
| under the Constitution each house has complete authority
| over its own rules. So Congress can simply neglect to
| pass a budget resolution and the only remedy is for
| individual representatives to raise points of order. The
| executive branch cannot indict or prosecute anyone in
| Congress for neglecting to follow congressional rules or
| laws that have the character of congressional rules.
|
| On the other hand, if you wish to refer to an
| appropriations bill as a "budget bill" you are merely
| disagreeing with me (and with congressional practice)
| over nomenclature. Personally, I have never heard of an
| appropriations bill referred to as a "budget bill", but I
| am sure someone does it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > First of all congress generally does not pass budget
| bills, they pass budget resolutions
|
| The budget resolution is a planning framework for the
| appropriations bills that make up the budget. It is not a
| "budget".
|
| > and congressional resolutions are not submitted to the
| president for his signature, and congressional
| resolutions are not submitted to the president for his
| signature and do not have the force of law.
|
| That's not true. All Congressional actions are
| resolutions (e.g. the USA PATRIOT Act was "House
| Resolution 3162" of the 107th Congress), and many end
| submitted to the President and with the force of law.
| Some are even primarily characterized as "resolutions"
| after they are signed and have the force of law (See, in
| terms of the budget space, the use of "continuing
| resolutions".)
|
| There are types of resolutions that are nonbinding, and
| do not have the force of law, and the "budget resolution"
| (which, again, is not the same as the budget) is one of
| them, but this isn't _generally_ true of "congressional
| resolutions".
|
| > As far as budget bills (like the Budget Act of 1974)
| are concerned, it is impossible for a previous congress
| to pass laws that govern the actions of succeeding
| congresses in a binding fashion
|
| The 1974 Budget Act is not (relevant to this discussion)
| a budget bill, it is a meta-budget bill, or maybe even a
| meta-meta-budget bill (that is, a bill on the process by
| which Congress will plan future budgets.) You are correct
| that it is not binding on future Congresses, but this has
| no bearing on the _budget_ not being binding, merely a
| past Congress 's plan on how to plan annually to arrive
| at a budget is not binding.
|
| > So Congress can simply neglect to pass a budget
| resolution
|
| ...which isn't a budget, but a plan for one...
|
| > and the only remedy is for individual representatives
| to raise points of order.
|
| Well, sure, but the budget resolution isn't the budget.
| If Congress doesn't pass a budget (or only passes part of
| one), then the remedy is "spending governed by the parts
| not passed stops" (that is, a government shutdown.) This
| is...rather noticeable.
|
| > On the other hand, if you wish to refer to an
| appropriations bill as a "budget bill" you are merely
| disagreeing with me (and with congressional practice)
| over nomenclature. Personally, I have never heard of an
| appropriations bill referred to as a "budget bill", but I
| am sure someone does it.
|
| While it is common to refer to the aggregate of
| appropriations as a "budget", its not usually used for
| individual appropriations bills as a "budget bill" unless
| they are a single consolidated bill, which is typically
| referred to as a "budget bill". Budget bills are
| frequently introduced, but less frequently passed. But
| not having a single budget bill passed is not "not having
| a budget" or "not having a budget with the force of law",
| its "not having a budget in which the annual
| appropriations were adopted in a single bill". Which
| is...less significant.
| butlerm wrote:
| > The budget resolution is a planning framework for the
| appropriations bills that make up the budget. It is not a
| "budget".
|
| Guess what the President's budget proposal says on the
| cover?
|
| "Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2023"
|
| And if we look inside do we find a list of congressional
| appropriations? No. Instead we find a list of
| appropriations requests and explanatory information for
| congressional appropriators. Typical chapter headings
| have language like this:
|
| "The Budget requests $773 billion in discretionary
| funding for DOD, a $69 billion or 9.8-percent increase
| from the 2021 enacted level."
|
| So I am sorry, I cannot take seriously the idea that
| appropriations bills are "budget bills" or specify a
| federal "budget" except in an informal sense, one
| contrary to that used by the federal government itself.
|
| > All Congressional actions are resolutions.
|
| I certainly agree in the technical sense, and since we
| are debating nomenclature here I should be more careful.
| [deleted]
| roamerz wrote:
| >> Liz Cheney went from #3 in House leadership to a
| pariah largely overnight.
|
| Seems to run in the family. The voters in Wyoming appear
| to agree.
| butlerm wrote:
| A budget from the executive branch is just a
| recommendation. Congress might use use it as a starting
| point, if they bother to pass a budget at all, which they
| are not in the habit of doing lately unfortunately.
|
| As far as Cheney is concerned, Trump had been out of
| office for months by the time she lost her leadership
| position. Anything he did was from the sidelines by that
| point.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Congress might use use it as a starting point, if they
| bother to pass a budget at all, which they are not in the
| habit of doing lately unfortunately.
|
| A budget is a budget even if it is neither comprehensive
| (i.e., all functions in one bill) nor for a full fiscal
| year at a time nor uses the word "budget" in its title.
| butlerm wrote:
| In congressional nomenclature however a budget is a
| guideline for appropriations bills, not something that
| carries the force of law. And Congress is quite specific
| about what it appropriates money for, even if it does it
| all in a several thousand page bill at the last minute.
|
| So a federal agency like the FAA generally prepares a
| budget recommendation that would be submitted to Congress
| as part of the president's budget, but then Congress
| would decide how much (if any) to appropriate for each
| activity, down to the level of individual programs in
| many cases. By the time Congress gets done with it
| becomes a list of appropriations, and the agency has no
| authority to transfer things around, spend money on what
| Congress did not authorize, or even purposely refuse to
| spend money (or spend less without a good reason) on what
| Congress has appropriated funding for.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/wh
| i...
|
| Relevant quote:
|
| "President Trump's support for a plan to lop more than
| 30,000 Federal Aviation Administration workers from the
| federal payroll gives fresh momentum to an effort that
| stalled in Congress last year.
|
| The proposal is included in Trump's 2018 budget, which
| would cut funding for the Transportation Department by 13
| percent."
| factsarelolz wrote:
| Okay, that's a proposal. Now show where it passed and the
| results.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| To be fair, I think that proposal died when it got to
| Congress.
| [deleted]
| pookha wrote:
| Large complex systems don't work.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's demonstrably untrue.
| brookst wrote:
| Aka the "I'm going to break all my toys to force mommy to buy
| me new ones I like better" mentality, projected into
| chronological adulthood.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Not quite. This is more like breaking all the toys in the
| playpen because you don't like that other kids get to play
| with them.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If we didn't get to withhold for the decades of bipartisanly
| meandering Iraq and Afghan war strategies, we definitely don't
| get to do it for a brief outage of the FAA's weather reporting
| system.
|
| Especially when evaluating the FAA would need to include the
| absolutely stellar commercial aviation safety record they and
| the NTSB have created over the last few decades.
| SamPatt wrote:
| I think we should have been able to withhold for unnecessary
| foreign wars.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| How do you imagine this withholding system would work?
|
| Does your tax burden stay the same, and they just make sure
| your dollars only go to the programs you support? Do they
| give you a list of every active program? Every single one?
| What happens with 800 page appropriations bills where you
| don't support one line-item? Can I opt not to fund the
| salaries of specific members of Congress? If my neighbor is
| a veteran, and they annoy me, can I disagree with their VA
| benefits?
| djbusby wrote:
| Would love to designate which things to prioritize from
| my tax money. 50% family services and education, 30%
| infrastructure, 10% military, 10% general.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Cool; we're now the nation of "every homeless person gets
| a puppy but no services". It sounds great on the
| individual level; it's entirely unworkable on a societal
| level.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Others have poked holes in the general line of thought here, so
| I won't repeat their points. But also, the uptime for these
| services seems really quite good. I mean an outage is rare
| enough that it makes national news. Imagine if they'd hosted on
| any of the big corporate cloud services with billions of
| dollars to throw at infrastructure -- they would have had
| multiple outages during our lifetimes just based on their
| provider doing down.
| flandish wrote:
| Just gotta ask: Southwest, NOTAM, and now this...
|
| Is some group pen-testing?
| scrumper wrote:
| Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, three times is enemy
| action.
|
| It could be Russia, Iran, China, climate direct action groups
| (probably not y'all qaeda though). Or maybe it's just ancient
| software running on older hardware that's starting to fall over
| after a couple years of lighter loads and a sudden increase in
| complexity and weirdness. Everything is breaking at the moment.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| There's also the world's biggest viral pandemic that's still
| ongoing and currently in a post-holiday peak where many
| people are out sick...
| scrumper wrote:
| "sudden increase in complexity and weirdness"
| Vecr wrote:
| By "y'all qaeda" you mean the boojahideen, not actual Al-
| Qaeda?
| fuzzylightbulb wrote:
| Ah yes, the Yee-Hawdists. Vanilla ISIS. Banana Republicans.
| Meal Team 6. Walmartyrs.
|
| Classic buffoonery. Until it's not.
| scrumper wrote:
| Yes exactly, the gravy seals.
| kfkfldo wrote:
| [flagged]
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Meal Team Six?
| whalesalad wrote:
| We're being pen tested by every other country in the world
| constantly.
| win32k wrote:
| Obviously not. Southwest issue isn't even close to having to do
| with FAA systems. Not everything is a cyber attack... most
| things are just accidental systems issues.
| kube-system wrote:
| I would think, of all forums on the internet, that this forum
| would realize how many heaping piles of fragile software the
| world is built on.
| koofdoof wrote:
| Could just as easily be a bias in reporting given the interest
| in other flight related issues lately. Previously unremarkable
| outages like this can suddenly become newsworthy if other
| current events seem to give them context. Once an issue is
| proven to draw clicks headlines will go back to that well any
| chance they get.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| It's weird that americans always seem to have this sort of
| siege mentality. We already know the causes of the other
| outages, and they have nothing to do with the foreign
| interference boogeyman.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Part of it is this intellectual one-upsmanship, especially at
| places like HN. People think they look smarter if they
| reflexively reject "the narrative".
| gretch wrote:
| Are you so sure you have 0 people of this type in [country
| you are from]?
|
| Are you sure you are not seeing selection bias because the
| majority of users on this site are Americans?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I think that it's still pretty unique to the US. I
| completely agree with your point in general, and I think
| that internet discussions are often centered around
| America, so there's a huge selection biais in online
| discourse. But I truly think that the "the empire is under
| siege"/national security discourse is much more prevalent
| in the US. Which makes sense considering it _is_ the empire
| ;). We don 't really have that where I'm from. Instead of a
| siege mentality, we have a prevalent inferiority complex
| hahaha.
| flandish wrote:
| Why do you assume I am American? Or are you speaking
| generally?
|
| "We" don't know the causes, only what was reported.
|
| I've worked on a lot of old systems needing to be updated,
| migrated, or sunset. For sure it's 99% of the time due to
| management being lazy. I get that.
|
| And I know correlation/causation, but hey my orig comment was
| a simple curiosity.
|
| Sure, my nature distrusts what a corporation says because
| it's always filtered through stockholder functions, but I
| still think "3 major airline issues in as many months" is
| kind of hilarious. Even if they seem to be in different
| facets.
|
| Does this happen often but only now is it reported to "us"?
| Or is this truly an odd and rare timing?
| jjulius wrote:
| >Sure, my nature distrusts what a corporation says because
| it's always filtered through stockholder functions
|
| OK, but in Southwest's case, you had former and current
| employees from various positions within the company
| publicly coming out and lambasting Southwest for the
| failure to actually invest in upgrading their scheduling
| system that led to the outage. It wasn't just a corporation
| coming out and going, "Here's what we hope you believe
| happened," it was pissed off employees publicly fucked off
| that their years of complaints went unheard and now they
| were all paying the price for being ignored.
|
| >Or is this truly an odd and rare timing?
|
| It's just odd/rare. I would wager that your brain's rush to
| try and tie them together like this is just it's way of
| trying to make sense of something it normally doesn't see.
| flandish wrote:
| > invest in upgrading
|
| Meaning - a system is so old, slow, bug, and
| vulnerability prone a bad actor can pen-test around and
| mess stuff up?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Actually you are right, sorry. Your comment didn't indicate
| that. My reply was mostly tainted by the other replies your
| comment got, and I assumed things I shouldn't have.
| pookha wrote:
| It's weird how Europeans have this fedual surf mentality.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I'm not european, and if anything, I'm looking into moving
| to the US soon. I'm not trying to do the usual "americans,
| amirite?" thing. It's just that there is much more of a
| "national security angle" to every discussion like this in
| the US. Which is pretty unique to america I thini
| blululu wrote:
| Go to Israel and say that. It is a feature but it is not
| unique. The US is a target for a variety of reasons.
| While a more mundane cause is likely, the implications of
| an attack are significant thus it would be unwise scoff
| this concern off as mere paranoia.
| fells wrote:
| If you're going to attack them, you could at least spell
| some of those words correctly.
| adolph wrote:
| Yeah, total nonsequiter. Everybody knows Fritz and Jacque
| don't surf.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Southwest's meltdown was definitely not an attack. Their crew
| scheduling software was so outdated that it required people to
| _call in_ and _speak to a human_ to report when they were out
| of position due to a cancelled flight. The sheer volume of
| cancellations resulted in this very manual system simply
| falling over, and so when the weather cleared up they actually
| had no idea where most of their crews were.
| gojomo wrote:
| Sure, that's the publicly-reported story. Is it sufficient?
| Hard to tell from the outside.
|
| Just a tiny bit of blackmailer-sabotage or vandal mischief-
| making - the sort of thing often underreported for legitimate
| reasons! - could've been the margin between some mild
| embarassment & the total collapse we saw. (For example: tying
| up the call-in lines to turn a normal hold time of minutes
| into hours, or long busy signals.)
|
| Simple monocausal stories are for unsophisticated spectators.
| kube-system wrote:
| What sort of reason do you have to believe that sabotage is
| involved, when it is adequately explained by the positive
| feedback loop of out-of-position calls exceeding the rate
| at which the can be answered?
| gojomo wrote:
| Why do you think I believe it was definitiely involved?
|
| I just don't think it's ruled-out by the simple official
| story. Some but not all of the reasons why I believe
| there might be more to the story are based on decades of
| life experience:
|
| * Whenever the media reports on something I know about
| intimately, they get it wrong, preferring pleasing simple
| narratives to the full details. Hence, I assume their
| stories on things I don't know intimately show a similar
| skew towards oversimplification, missing-details that are
| embarassing to the key actors, and audience-pleasing
| explanations.
|
| * I've not ever been in IT security for a major or public
| company. But even in tiny organizations, I've observed
| strong incentives - not all misguided! - to downplay
| malicious mischief as a contributor to any problems.
| Organizations don't want to encourage the perpetrators
| with publicity, nor encourage copycats. Orgs also don't
| want to be embarassed by lax measures. From direct
| reports from individuals at larger organizations - _and_
| reliable public accounts of late-reported hack /extortion
| incidents - I believe these incentives can be even
| stronger at large, slow-moving, distributed-
| responsibility public companies (though of course the
| penalties for explicitly-misleading statements also
| larger).
|
| * Plenty of mean, crazy, or self-interested people may
| have it out for Southwest, from previously-angered
| travellers to disgruntled employees to motivated short-
| sellers (individuals or formal funds). And even _if_ the
| potential for sabotage was under formal investigation
| right now, the investigators - private or public - might
| want to hide that fact until definitive evidence
| collected & perpetrators are prosecutable. It can take
| months or years for the real story to emerge!
|
| A fragile outdated system finally reaching a chaotic
| breaking point is one possible & sufficient answer, of
| course.
|
| But it's also a potential weak-point to be pushed-over-
| the-edge by motivated saboteurs or extortionists. In
| fact, such a weak point is _ideal_ for certain criminal
| schemes, because of its deniability by both perpetrator
| and victim as merely a problem of aged systems &
| incompetence.
|
| So, only the naive would rule it out entirely based on
| only self-serving public narratives.
| kube-system wrote:
| Nothing we know about anything rules out the possibility
| that we might later learn something new that shows
| differently. But we can only make informed decisions
| based on what we do know, because the unknown is
| infinite. In the end, most occurrences in the world are
| just as plain as they appear.
|
| > So, only the naive would rule it out entirely based on
| only self-serving public narratives.
|
| I don't technically disagree, but it is also just as
| naive to ignore our human proportionality bias and
| discount the relative probability of the available
| evidence.
| jaywalk wrote:
| All you're doing is letting your imagination run wild
| because you don't want to believe the simplest (and most
| likely) explanation. This isn't helpful to anyone.
| gojomo wrote:
| It's a helpful exercise for naive young people who always
| believe the simple publicly-reported stories, and haven't
| yet had the life experience to know there's often more to
| the story, which only comes out years later (if ever), or
| via private conversations to deeply-knowledgeable
| personnel!
| jaywalk wrote:
| No, it's really not a helpful exercise. An actual helpful
| exercise is to determine when an official story doesn't
| make sense, and to understand that there is probably more
| to it. In this case, the official story make perfect
| sense. Doubting it is just creating fairy tales.
| flandish wrote:
| > perfect sense
|
| So you just inherently believe all that is reported as
| fact?
|
| Remember when the Gulf of Tonkin incident was "for real
| really real" and we invaded Vietnam?
|
| Or the WMDs in Iraq?
|
| I'm not tinfoil hatting - Just calling out how
| interesting it is 3 major events in a documented as
| fragile industry happen so close.
|
| That's literally all I mentioned in my orig comment.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Remember when the Gulf of Tonkin incident was "for real
| really real" and we invaded Vietnam?
|
| Well, no, the US military was (openly) in Vietnam in
| support of South Vietnam _long_ before the Gulf of Tonkin
| incident. Heck, the US military was there (again overtly)
| in support of _France_ for several years before South
| Vietnam existed as such. And, ironically, they were there
| in support of the Viet Minh - which later became both
| North Vietnam and the Viet Cong - even before _that_ ,
| with almost no break between, starting in July 1945.
|
| Insofar as there was an international incident that led
| to the US invasion of Vietnam it was - though it took a
| few years for the response - Pearl Harbor, not the Gulf
| of Tonkin. All the subsequent fighting in Indochina was
| breakdown in relation between erstwhile allies who were
| all already present, after the Japanese were driven out
| and had surrendered.
| trollied wrote:
| Has anything happened regarding IT staffing at the FAA recently?
| There was the NOTAM outage last week [1], and now this!
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34337158
| xeromal wrote:
| Probably just more visibility on the matter. Once a major issue
| happens, things tend to get followed for a while. It can get
| bandwagoney
| neilv wrote:
| I don't know anything about these two incidents. But, FWIW,
| some of the past professional work I'm most proud of was on FAA
| contracts (on other systems). I'm sure they're handling the
| immediate situation, and -- consistent with their culture --
| they'll analyze what went wrong and can be learned, and follow
| through on that.
| tjohns wrote:
| For what it's worth, the METAR network (NADIN) is maintained by
| the NWS, not the FAA.
| acdha wrote:
| The NOTAM system was apparently running on old SPARC hardware
| so I'd easily believe that they haven't been given enough
| budget to hire engineers and are basically keeping the lights
| on. One peril of the government funding model is that it's
| effective at shoveling money to contracting companies but not
| having skilled oversight, so you tend to see lots of big
| projects which founder under their own weight.
| buildbot wrote:
| SPARC gear would last that long though, I recall playing with
| a T1 system and opening the chassis to watch the Christmas
| tree of self check lights on every part of the board turn on.
| The entire system was designed to self check every component
| down to like, individual VRMs.
| pookha wrote:
| NOTAM could be run from a pre-historic Toshiba mainframe.
| it's static. Doesn't need billions in funding.
| acdha wrote:
| It doesn't need billions but it needs enough for dedicated
| staffing. Many federal agencies have the problem that
| they're not given general funding for staff but are given
| money for large contract projects. It's not uncommon for
| that to be structured in a way that, say, a big project has
| rooms full of developers, PMs, testers, etc. but something
| small has like one dude keeping it going when they can find
| time and a stream of unanswered requests to management
| asking go either fund or decommission it, hire a
| replacement for people who retired, etc. or that the big
| project which was supposed to replace it is years overdue.
|
| I would not be surprised to learn that this was the case
| here, too.
| nhtsamera wrote:
| It's static, until a contractor ignores the post-it note on
| their monitor that says, "IMPORTANT: ALWAYS add an extra
| newline BEFORE saving the file".
|
| Once that happens, you have to hope that your backups work
| - why bother having disaster recovery drills for a static
| system?
|
| Once you realize that your backups are hosed, you may
| experience a creeping suspicion that software is never
| truly static when human operators are involved.
| hackmiester wrote:
| I would love to see more information about the underlying
| architecture of the NOTAM system, if you can recall where you
| saw that.
| acdha wrote:
| Not sure how reliable this guy is but it's certainly easy
| to believe:
|
| https://twitter.com/PatrickMoorhead/status/1613937512002772
| 9...
| wiz21c wrote:
| Maybe there's an ongoing cyber attack ? :-)
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Nope, just the regular old spending money on new projects
| that benefit the careers of powerful politicians but refusing
| to spend on maintenance attack.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| That isn't being admitted to?
| ProAm wrote:
| Happens more frequently than you think.
| eh9 wrote:
| Admitting attacks can lead to more attacks if you're not
| prepared
| envyac wrote:
| You mean besides the last three years of reduced on-site
| staffing, and employee travel to support maintenance and
| modernization? No.
|
| $5 says this is the XKCD for this. Corrupted DB file was the
| culprit, as announced by the FAA. It's a system that relies on
| user inputs, often manual, and it's all being put into a
| database. My bet is a user decided to put in a bunch of "fun
| characters" to make their input easier to read. You can't
| account for and sanitize all levels of stupidity on user
| inputs.
|
| https://xkcd.com/327/
| krisoft wrote:
| > You can't account for and sanitize all levels of stupidity
| on user inputs.
|
| That is false and a defeatist attitude.
|
| Sanitization is not the right solution anyway. If you are
| working with any form of a database and don't know from the
| top of your head how to avoid query injection attacks then
| you should look up in the manual of your database. The
| solution is most often called "parameterized query" or
| something similar.
| NavinF wrote:
| Of course you can account for that. They're just byte
| strings. That xkcd is poking fun at incompetent programmers,
| not stupid users.
| flerchin wrote:
| SENIOR DUTY METEOROLOGIST NWS ADMINISTRATIVE MESSAGE NWS NCEP
| CENTRAL OPERATIONS COLLEGE PARK MD 1120Z THU JAN 19 2023
|
| ...METAR OUTAGE...
|
| AOMC reported that there is a metar outage going on...167 missing
| sites at last check. The FAA is investigating the issue.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| > 167 missing sites at last check.
|
| That seems like a lot but curious to know what percentage of
| their total sites this is.
|
| I think I found the full list here:
| https://www.aviationweather.gov/docs/metar/stations.txt
|
| This list is worldwide and I see no information about this
| outage being region specific so I'll assume it's worldwide.
|
| Seems like they have about 9,517 sites so this is about 1.75%
| of their sites worldwide
| daenney wrote:
| You should not assume it's world wide. Given "the FAA is
| investigating" and there's no reports of other countries it's
| reasonable to assume that this is limited to the US, or at
| least northern continental America.
|
| (The title of the submission is also "Nationwide FAA weather
| reporting outage")
| mvgoogler wrote:
| > The title of the submission is also "Nationwide FAA
| weather reporting outage"
|
| Yeah, but the title is made up. There is noting in the
| official report about this being "nationwide".
|
| The report only states that there is a metar outage
| consisting of 167 stations.
|
| It doesn't provide any context on which stations are
| missing or how they are distributed.
|
| Adding "nationwide" to the title is pure FUD IMO.
| dylan604 wrote:
| if the outages are on the east coast and a flight from
| the west coast is preparing to fly to one of the east
| coast airports that are affected, how is this not
| nationwide?
| ajoseps wrote:
| hm is this going to affect flights?
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| One thing though, these types of things can't be helpful to the
| political future of Pete Buttigieg. Between airline issues and
| rail strikes and shipping/port issues, he has been very
| politically unlucky.
| blktiger wrote:
| Not necessarily, if he gets a lot of airtime and is seen as
| identifying and fixing problems he could get a real big boost.
| Most of the problems the Transportation Secretary has to deal
| with are the fault of aging systems, a limited budget from
| congress, etc.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > if he gets a lot of airtime and is seen as identifying and
| fixing problems he could get a real big boost.
|
| The thing is he is not. Even with the negotiations over the
| railroad strike, he was not talked about. It was Joe Biden in
| the news.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's fairly normal. Secretaries who become The Story tend
| to find that's not a good spot, even if it's for positive
| reasons.
|
| Buttigieg's biggest asset is likely his ability to get on
| Fox News for an interview and steamroller over their usual
| rhetorical tactics.
| pookha wrote:
| Okay this is bullshit. There's something happening-- that they're
| not being transparent about -- and I'd guess it's malicious
| (nation state hack).
| idiotsecant wrote:
| How do we go about getting entropy placed in the terrorist
| watch list? Maybe then we could fix some bridges and roads too.
| justapassenger wrote:
| That's possible. But also it's possible that decades of
| underinvestment are catching up.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| IDK about the Feds but every contact I have in state
| government and local government & public functions indicates
| that both have been shoved from "slowly deteriorating" to
| "brink of collapse of ability to provide basic service" by
| the shock of the Covid years and recent wage inflation (which
| neither's even come close to keeping up with). All were
| threadbare as hell already, so it was easy for Covid to tear
| some outright holes.
| mvgoogler wrote:
| Full list of reporting stations is here:
| https://www.aviationweather.gov/docs/metar/stations.txt
|
| The report is that 167 are missing.
|
| That would be roughly 5% of US stations or 0.2% of worldwide
| stations.
|
| I was able to look up meters for airports that I'm familiar with.
| https://www.aviationweather.gov/metar
|
| So, it is real but far from a total collapse of the system.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| METARs are perpetually down. one funny thing about them, they are
| deemed to be a critical service which requires something like
| 99.99% uptime to be in compliance with the FAA regulations
| governing service delivery. to get around this, a METAR is
| considered up as long as it has power, regardless as to whether
| it itsproducing data or providing accurate readings.
|
| the technology was certified and frozen in the 90s. many of these
| devices are running windows 3.1 for networking!
|
| they cost more than 2 million dollars a piece to install (at
| least around here) and require 4 trips per year to calibrate.
|
| since there was little incentive and herculean constraints for
| the team in charge of METARs to improve the situation, another
| team at the FAA decided to create their own non certified
| version. to be installed in places that can't afford a METAR.
| They were able to build a better system using the same hardware
| but updated software for a hardware cost of $80k, 250k installed.
| this system only needs calibration once every 2 years. so it
| represents about a 1/10 cost of install and 1/8 cost of
| maintenance.
|
| naturally this pissed off some people. I'm not going to get into
| internal politics beyond saying the project is currently frozen
| until a number of large efforts imposed on the program are
| completed. I believe it will still eventually come out because
| the cat is out of the bag and there are many groups desperate for
| a better alternative.
| mayormcmatt wrote:
| I'm very interested in this after reading your account, but
| couldn't find additional information online. Do you have
| sources we could look at?
| mayormcmatt wrote:
| Thanks so much!
| gnarbarian wrote:
| https://medium.com/faa/faa-testing-new-system-to-increase-
| we...
|
| https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/.
| ..
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Cameras list/images: https://weathercams.faa.gov/
| binkHN wrote:
| > many of these devices are running windows 3.1 for networking!
|
| Woah. Really?
| heyflyguy wrote:
| This is really crazy to read about, and I am thankful you
| posted this.
| mshake2 wrote:
| At this point I'm just waiting for the country to collapse
| under bureaucracy.
| geepound wrote:
| [dead]
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| It's not that USA is doing incredibly well with bureaucracy,
| it's that everybody else is doing worse for one reason or
| another
| wongarsu wrote:
| I don't see much evidence that the US is the best
| functioning country around. It has a great geographic
| position and managed to get a great economy (in no small
| part due to said geographic advantages in WWI and WWII),
| but in measures that involve the government providing good
| services the US isn't doing any better than other developed
| countries.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| in fact we're doing far worse on many fronts. we spent
| more per student than almost any other first world nation
| but we place dead last in outcomes.
| guhidalg wrote:
| View it from the other side: even with this much dysfunction,
| things work most of the time and when they fail they are
| recoverable. There's no motivation to improve until something
| fails hard enough. If no one crashes as a result of this
| METAR outage, I predict nothing will change.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| bureaucracy is a form of entropy. it will grow in any
| organization until it is outcompeted, a catastrophe occurs,
| or it collapses.
| sokoloff wrote:
| A METAR* is the weather message, not the observation system
| (AWOS, ASOS, etc).
|
| * METeorological Aerodrome Report
| gnarbarian wrote:
| yes you are correct.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Fortunately, the backup plan is online and working. Look out the
| window.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Doesn't work when you're flying through a cloud.
| cj wrote:
| Or at night.
|
| Or to assess wind speed.
| krisoft wrote:
| Or when you want to know the weather at your destination
| half a continent away.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Well, it _works_ ( "I'm in a cloud!") but isn't sufficiently
| detailed for the needs of the situation.
| [deleted]
| jcutrell wrote:
| Things I use as a pilot of a single engine piston:
|
| - Temp dew point spread - Barometric pressure - TAF / forecast
| - Wind shear - Freezing level - Cloud tops - Cloud level AGL -
| visibility measured in actual distance
|
| All of these things can't be measured easily by a human.
| Visibility is probably the easiest, but can you tell me what
| the dew point is easily?
|
| If I use it, imagine the critical importance for airliners.
| snuxoll wrote:
| Armchair sim-only pilot/aviation enthusiast, simply not
| having accurate wind speeds is enough to prevent a jet from
| landing because you don't have data to run performance
| calculations.
|
| Can you land _without_ running performance? Sure. But now a
| standard landing is an emergency since you can 't verify you
| have enough runway to come to a complete stop. (See SWA 1248
| for what happens when you don't run landing performance
| calculations correctly in iffy conditions).
|
| This is, of course, ignoring all the other issues that simply
| not having accurate barometric pressure and cloud levels when
| flying IFR. If you're flying an approach that descends over
| mountains through a cloud layer and lack accurate weather
| data (specifically barometric pressure) then the chances of
| your EGPWS shouting "TERRAIN! TERRAIN! PULL UP!" because
| you're low due to an incorrect altimeter reading are non-
| zero. Do this in a mountain range and the EGPWS calls may end
| up being too little, too late even if you immediately perform
| terrain escape maneuvers given you still need accurate
| altimeter readings for EGPWS to function correctly.
|
| Accurate METAR reports are safety critical for aviation. Full
| stop.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Jets plug these numbers into the flight computer to determine
| landing speed (Vref), needed runway length, and sometimes
| configuration (flaps etc.). So without weather I'd expect
| commercial flights to simply stay on the ground.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| I got curious and Google'd some of this:
|
| > The dew point in relation to the temperature gives the
| pilots information about the humidity, and can affect
| visibility. If the dew point is close to the temperature,
| humidity is high, which can cause hazy conditions, or even
| fog.
| dbrueck wrote:
| It's also an easy way to get a rough estimate of the bottom
| of the clouds: 400' above the ground for every 1degC of
| difference between the temperature and the dew point.
|
| This is useful for a couple of things, including whether or
| not you can legally take off or land when flying under
| visual flight rules.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm very much willing to believe you when you say you can do
| it practically, but there's something logically or
| epistemically funny about measuring visibility using vision.
| bombcar wrote:
| Isn't there a way to rough out the dew point from the cloud
| base altitude? I seem to remember that from ground school.
| victortroz wrote:
| I remember being the other way around, you could estimate
| height of the cloud based on dew point and base altitude.
| dbrueck wrote:
| Yup! 400' AGL for every 1 deg C of temperature spread.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yah! So you can find the dew point by flying up to just
| below the cloud and look at the altimeter and do some
| math ;)
| [deleted]
| brootstrap wrote:
| Wind shear is easy. feel the wind on your face, then jump as
| high as possible and feel the wind up there.
| ledauphin wrote:
| this is an advanced technique that they don't usually teach
| until the commercial certificate.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Oh, so that's what turbulence is.
| snuxoll wrote:
| Wind shear is one of many various causes of turbulence in
| aviation. Certainly a common one, however.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I suspect that's not good enough when planning a flight.
| xyst wrote:
| only real pilots fly without computers
| aliqot wrote:
| duh look through a skylight
| geocrasher wrote:
| I'm sorry, but "looking out the window" has been obsolete for
| thousands of years. What aviators really need to use is the
| Weather Rock [1] and its associated documentation.
| If the rock is wet, it's raining. If the rock is
| swinging, the wind is blowing. If the rock casts a
| shadow, the sun is shining. If the rock does not cast a
| shadow and is not wet, the sky is cloudy. If the rock is
| difficult to see, it is foggy. If the rock is white, it
| is snowing. If the rock is coated with ice, there is a
| frost. If the ice is thick, it's a heavy frost.
| If the rock is bouncing, there is an earthquake. If the
| rock is under water, there is a flood. If the rock is
| warm, it is sunny. If the rock is missing, there was a
| tornado. If the rock is wet and swinging violently,
| there is a hurricane. If the rock can be felt but not
| seen, it is night time. If the rock has white splats on
| it, watch out for birds. If there are two rocks, stop
| drinking, you are drunk.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_rock
| mxuribe wrote:
| I've never heard of this, and its brilliantly hilarious! TIL
| about the weather rock! :-)
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Someone should have prompted you to learn about it sooner
| by giving you a Round Tuit.
| geocrasher wrote:
| And then thousands of pilots checked Weather Underground's sister
| site, Weather Overground...
| brookst wrote:
| Never understood why WU went after miners first.
| cheschire wrote:
| Untapped market to network the canaries.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Don't give Helium any more ideas.
| sitkack wrote:
| You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind
| Blows
| cratermoon wrote:
| Better stay away from those that carry 'round a fire hose
| sitkack wrote:
| For those following along, these are lyrics from the Bob
| Dylan song that is the source of the name for both the
| Weather Underground website as well as the militant
| group, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground
| samdcbu wrote:
| a VC told them to use a bottom-up TAM, so they started at the
| bottom and now they're here
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Much easier to predict the weather underground. Dark, damp.
|
| Once you build up credibility for being right, you can expand
| into other more difficult areas. If you keep predicting for
| the underground, then it will also help keep you correct
| average up.
| conorcleary wrote:
| Condensation
| acomjean wrote:
| its a 60's hippy pun.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground
| jmartens wrote:
| Someone sell them a modern status page!
| w10-1 wrote:
| The outage seems to be in receiving reports from weather stations
| (primarily airports).
|
| When arriving at an airport, a pilot is required to confirm they
| have the latest METAR information for the site. It's presumed
| negligence when pilots don't know the weather. This is because
| weather is the #1 environmental factor in accidents.
|
| But the actual use of weather in flying (esp. for commercial
| flights) is not via METAR but via in-cockpit radar. This is an
| FAA-sponsored service, but it's unclear if that's affected.
|
| So it seems to be more administrative than safety, but just as
| disabling.
| tass wrote:
| You say radar, but I think what you might mean is ads-b[0].
|
| This is the system where weather info (among other information)
| is transmitted from a network of ground stations.
|
| [0]: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/adsb/pilot
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| For what it's worth, there are also actually on-board radar
| systems in some aircraft
| tass wrote:
| Yes there are but they don't give you enough information to
| decide whether you can land at an airport.
|
| ADS-B gives you METAR, for instance.
| xxpor wrote:
| Does in cockpit radar actually get you on the ground pressure?
| jaywalk wrote:
| No, of course not. But pilots aren't going to
| aviationweather.gov while they're flying, either. They get
| that info from the controller or ATIS.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| No doubt. Inflight Wi-Fi is absurdly expensive. No way
| they're paying for it.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| I think its $8 a flight on Alaska. Doesn't seem that
| outlandish.
| mwint wrote:
| No, those come from ground reporting stations which feed into
| a whole bunch of sources - online stuff will give it to you
| including Foreflight, or just key up the ATIS and listen for
| a few seconds. Or ask a controller.
| zackbloom wrote:
| Unlike the NOTAM outage, a METAR outage will and should actually
| affect flights. Without weather at your destination it becomes
| impossible to know if it's safe to land there. The forecasts
| (TAF) are actually used more in flight planning, but actual
| weather is very valuable while enroute, when not close enough to
| hear weather over the radio from the destination airport.
| afgrant wrote:
| Are local weather conditions not generally available for all
| airports at all times?
| krisoft wrote:
| Yes. And that service is called METAR (METeorological
| Aerodrome Reports).
| joezydeco wrote:
| They are. I've even seen small aircraft pilots call the
| automated weather line from the cockpit while they're
| preparing to approach the destination airport.
| snuxoll wrote:
| That automated weather frequency relies on METAR data from
| the Aviation Weather Service here in the US, and that's
| where ATC gets their information from as well when they're
| advising pilots of surface winds when giving landing
| clearance.
|
| Per the source, 167 airport weather stations are not
| reporting correctly (either due to a highly unlikely
| concurrent fault with the stations, or more likely an issue
| with the system they report to).
|
| Local weather is always used, but that's precisely what is
| unavailable right now.
| tjohns wrote:
| You have it backwards, ATIS doesn't pull from METARs...
| the METAR and ATIS recording are both produced at the
| same time locally by the local weather observer (usually
| a controller in the tower), reading raw data directly
| from the on-field weather station and making manual edits
| as necessary. The two should match up exactly, but that's
| because they're both produced by the same process.
|
| If the tower is closed, or it's an untowered field, the
| system can run in automatic mode. In that case the radio
| broadcast gets updated every minute, much more frequently
| than METARs get updated (every hour).
| joezydeco wrote:
| And, if the tower _is_ open, you have to acknowledge the
| latest ATIS report (by signifying the revision) before
| you can go.
| NegativeK wrote:
| NOTAMs cover things like runway closures or airspace closures
| due to hazard, as well as a huge host of other issues.
|
| Stopping takeoffs was absolutely the right move, since they
| couldn't handle the phone throughput.
| huslage wrote:
| Err. NOTAM should also have effected flights. Please don't
| downplay the safety of airspace.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| >Unlike the NOTAM outage, a METAR outage will and should
| actually affect flights.
|
| We have mines being blasted to our north in temporarily
| restricted military airspace - lets just allow pilots to roll
| the dice?
| tjohns wrote:
| A pilot can legally land without a METAR, and this happens all
| the time. The stations can and do go offline. Sometimes they
| break, especially after a severe storm. Many smaller airfields
| don't have on-site weather reporting, some others don't have a
| network connection.
|
| You look at the closest available weather station and you look
| at the forecasts -- human-authored (TAFs) and computer-autored
| (GFA/MOS). And when you arrive, you look outside at the actual
| conditions -- the windsock, actual flight visibility, etc. If
| the conditions are worse than expected, you divert to your
| alternate.
| teeray wrote:
| Unrelated to aviation, but I actually find METARs and TAFs are
| useful for hiking and skiing. I use the altimeter settings for
| my altimeter when hiking, and knowing the altitude of cloud
| layers is useful to know what the visibility will be like on
| the mountain (you have to do a bit of math with the airport
| elevation and the mountain's elevation, but hey--it works!).
| krisoft wrote:
| I used METAR for running, or rather to say which days I'm
| allowed to not run.
|
| I noticed that when the day was long, and I was feeling tired
| and lazy it was a lot easier to find some excuse why not to
| run that day. This excuse was often the weather. But on the
| other hand I didn't want to say no matter the weather I must
| run, because that is obviously excessive. So I made up a
| simple "algorithm" to decide if the weather fits the
| minimums, and if it did I must go and run. And I choose to
| base it on the measurements from the METAR of the local
| airport.
| alhirzel wrote:
| Cool idea, what's your algorithm's decision criteria?
| webdoodle wrote:
| I like your idea of visibility a lot, and would like to know
| more. Are you using a barometric altimeter? I use one hiking,
| but mainly for dead reckoning using an USGS elevation map. I
| usually just set my altimeter using those maps.
| dpifke wrote:
| In the era before cell-phone internet, being able to call the
| automated weather reporting station at the nearest airport
| and have it read out conditions was hugely useful.
|
| For folks who haven't seen what's in a METAR/TAF:
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/weather/asos/ (By default,
| clicking a station gives you the abbreviated format; you can
| select the "decode" radio button and click "update" to
| translate it into English.)
| strictnein wrote:
| Yep. Not knowing the atmospheric pressure can lead to planes
| crashing, especially if it's inclement weather.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Wouldn't each airport measure and report the local weather
| anyways?
| JonathonW wrote:
| Each airport does measure and report the local weather--
| that's where METAR data comes from. And busier airports
| broadcast that data locally, via ATIS or D-ATIS, for pilots
| in the immediate vicinity to use (either on the ground or
| on approach to the airport).
|
| That doesn't help a pilot plan ahead for conditions on
| their route or at their destination, though-- that's where
| METARs come in.
| repiret wrote:
| To add some nuance to what other commenters have said, 95%+ of
| all NOTAMs are useless, telling you about grass that might be
| mowed, animals that might be present, temporary "obstacles"
| that you could only hit if you were flying both dangerously and
| illegally, correcting immaterial typos in the charts, or
| updates to dubiously helpful information published in the
| charts (number of hotels in the surrounding area).
|
| Others are potentially useful, but not essential for safe
| flight. Things like closed taxiways, nonavailability of
| services at an airport, etc.
|
| And a very few are really critically important. Runway
| closures, correction to vital chart information, airspace
| changes, malfunctioning navigation aids.
|
| The FAA's reaction to the NOTAM outage was probably the correct
| course of action. But make no mistake, the volume of spam
| NOTAMs combined with the lack of an easy way for a pilot to
| quickly sort for important NOTAMs makes us all less safe.
| snuxoll wrote:
| > But make no mistake, the volume of spam NOTAMs combined
| with the lack of an easy way for a pilot to quickly sort for
| important NOTAMs makes us all less safe.
|
| The system is in desperate need of some modernization, no
| argument there. The fact that there isn't a simple
| criticality filed with them that makes it easy to see what
| will actually impact flight planning (airspace closure /
| runway closure vs stupid chart updates) is insane.
| mbreese wrote:
| The idea is probably that is you included a criticality
| flag, pilots would ignore low priority notices and
| potentially miss something (like grass being mowed at the
| time they plan on landing) that could affect them, but is
| otherwise immaterial for most others.
|
| I can't say one way or the other, as I'm not a pilot, but
| that's the argument I'd make to keep the system w/o
| priority levels.
| repiret wrote:
| As a pilot of single-engine airplanes, I disagree that
| mowing is useful. I need to look at the runway I'm
| landing on for obstructions no matter what. The time of
| year when mowing might occur, I might also have to
| contend with deer, who are just as hazardous and don't
| file NOTAMs before grazing near the runway.
| tjohns wrote:
| The problem is that "criticality" is too binary. A tower
| light NOTAM might be low-criticality for a fixed-wing
| airplane pilot flying day VFR, but high-criticality for a
| helicopter pilot flying at night in IMC.
|
| Similarly, chart updates are very important if you're
| flying IFR. Going below minimums while in the soup ends...
| very badly. If somebody's changed the MEA/DA/MDA, you can
| bet I want to know.
|
| NOTAMs do have keywords to tell you the subject (i.e.
| airport closure vs tower light), and most briefings will
| highlight the ones likely to be urgent.
|
| (That said, I'd argue printing out all the tower notams in
| textual format is somewhat useless. The NEXTGEN FSS
| briefings are plotting them graphically now, which is an
| improvement.)
| lamontcg wrote:
| Uh oh, I've got a flight in just under 4 hours...
|
| There doesn't seem to be any flight delays though or notices on
| the airport website...
| armatav wrote:
| Blatantly obvious hack
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-01-19 23:02 UTC)