Notice to Air Missions: The Warning System Pilots Love to Hate

A NOTAM — a Notice to Air Missions, formerly Notice to Airmen — is the aviation system's way of telling pilots what has changed since the charts were printed. A closed runway, an inoperative approach light, a crane erected near the airport, a navigation aid out of service, restricted airspace activated for a presidential visit: all are published as NOTAMs, and reviewing the relevant ones is part of the preflight planning that 14 CFR §91.103 requires before every flight. The concept is indispensable. The aviation environment changes constantly, and a pilot who briefs a runway that is in fact closed, or plans through airspace that is in fact restricted, is courting disaster. NOTAMs are the authoritative, timely channel for that information. The execution is notorious. NOTAMs are written in a dense, abbreviated, upper-case telegraphic style inherited from teletype days, and a single flight can return dozens or hundreds of them, the genuinely critical buried among the routine. Aviation-safety bodies have long criticized the resulting information overload, and a now-famous accident investigation highlighted a flight crew who missed a NOTAM about a closed runway amid the clutter. A 2023 U.S. outage of the NOTAM system briefly halted departures nationwide, underscoring how load-bearing the system is. Reform is underway: plain-language formatting, better prioritization, and digital briefing tools that filter and highlight what matters for a specific route. AeroLink and modern electronic flight bags exist in part to tame this firehose. But the underlying duty is unchanged — the pilot in command is responsible for being informed before flight, and a NOTAM unread is a hazard unseen.