I plan a simple one leg flight to destination EDRP.
The NOTAMS listed under route planning seem to have a random order. My destination NOTAM is somewhere far down, preceded by lots of enroute airports. But even one specific airport maybe interrupted by another one.
Please present the NOTAM in the order: DEP DEST ENR
I see you also have a category „warning NOTAMS“. Whatever this is, it does not make sense to me that one is presented on the very top of the list, while some more follow at the end.
I agree, some more structure would be helpful, for example first departure airport notams en route airport notams, then arrival airport notams followed by en route navigation notams (not airport related) or any other logical order.
There is definitely a sorting order, based on various user input over the last years. But nothing is carved in stone, so if we can find a new consensus then that would be fine by me, although I do believe this subject is like the flightplan navlog: ask 10 pilots how it should be formatted and you get 10 different answers ;-).
Some interesting background reading might be https://theairlinepilots.com/flightplanningforairlinepilots/notamdecode.php and https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/notams/media/ICAO_NOTAM_Format_Example.pdf
The current sorting order is based on the NOTAM SCOPE. The scope is an attribute assigned by the authority who created the notam and can be one of the following (combinations are also possible:)
A Aerodrome
E Enroute
W Navigation warning
K Checklist
Warning NOTAMS are displayed first; these are often concerning airspace and/or area restrictions. The idea is by putting these on top of the list the change of these getting missed by the pilot is minimized. Often there are only a handful of these WARNING NOTAMS; for example for a route from EHTX to EDNY (quite a long stretch) the NOTAM briefing start with the WARNING NOTAMS that lists 4 NOTAMS.
The next on the NOTAM list are the ENROUTE NOTAMS. Personally I find these always less interesting; often it is about obstacles and obstacle lights.
TIP: USe the NOTAM filtering ->NOTAM Settings->Other NOTAMS to setup filters
As last group are the the AIRFIELD NOTAMS. There are often a lot of these, specially if a user has disabled the NOTAM filter for Airports. If NOTAM Filter for Airports is enabled, then only NOTAMS for the departure airport, arrival airport and assigned alternate airports will be shown, or if the creator of the NOTAM also assigned it as WARNING or ENROUTE reducing the list significantly.
Sort order within a group (warning, enroute, airfield) is done based on distance from the point of departure to the NOTAM qline centre points, what explains why NOTAMS for arrival airport are always located at the bottom.
While working on this post it came to my mind that airfield NOTAMS that are also tagged as WARNING (the EDDZ/B/0591/25 for example in above screenshot) should maybe also be displayed in the WARNING section at the top of the NOTAM briefing.
Feel free to comment 😉
