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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Should you brief the NOTAMs? Yes. Is it common to miss one? Also yes. Go look at the ATC YouTube channels and you will find lots of people being intercepted by fighter jets even though they use Foreflight.

Another problem is NOTAM spam; it seems like, in some areas, there are a bunch of NOTAMs that aren't very important but that you still have to read through to see if they're relevant. "We're testing GPS jamming" or "we will send a fighter jet if you fly into this rectangle" look a lot like the more common "taxiway T at Middle Of Nowhere Municipal Airport is out of service until 1/1/2038".

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"One lamp out of 18 on this radio tower is operating at 75% brightness" repeated every day for years

Could be a good opportunity for using an LLM to summarize and extract anything important?

Here’s a critical NOTAM that was missed. Translated, it means, if you fly here, the Russians will shoot your ass down. And so they did. But nothing encodes that information in the NOTAM so there is nothing for an LLM to summarize and extract. Expecting an AI to compensate for poor system design is magical thinking.

A1492/14 NOTAM Q) UKDV/QRTCA/IV/BO /W /260/320/4822N03807E095 A) UKDV B) 1407141800 C) 1408142359EST E) TEMPO RESTRICTED AREA INSTALLED WITHIN FIR DNIPROPETROVSK BOUNDED BY COORDINATES : 495355N 0380155E 485213N 0372209E 480122N 0370253E 471352N 0365856E 465018N 0374325E 465900N 0382000E 470642N 0381324E THEN ALONG STATE BOUNDARY UNTIL POINT 495355N 0380155E. RESTRICTION NOT APPLIED FOR FLIGHTS OF STATE ACFT OF UKRAINE. F) FL260 G) FL320)

Besides that, would the developer of the LLM accept liability for accidentally filtering out important NOTAMS, or hallucinating NOTAMS that did not exist?

That looks less like poor system design (although I'm sure that's contributing) and more like understatement that's practically criminal. Who the hells hears "Russia may shoot down your plane if you go here" and thinks they should convey it via "tempo restricted area bounded by coordinates"? That's like posting a "do not enter" on a door with a bomb behind it. Is English so hard?

For pilots, "restricted area" is already synonymous with "absolutely do not even think about going here" and is used for things like military testing and training areas that regularly use live ammo, extremely sensitive military or bases, etc. As a concrete example, Area 51 is in a "restricted area".

> For pilots, "restricted area" is already synonymous with "absolutely do not even think about going here"

I don't buy it. How often do you hear of a passenger plane getting shot down for entering restricted airspace over peaceful territory like the US? What about over combat zones, like over Ukraine or Russia? Who in their right mind equates these as as equally severe? If you had to make an emergency landing would you seriously view these equally?

At least within the US, entering a restricted area without authorization can result in your own personal military air show, followed by lots of questioning, possibly prison, losing your license or both. You don't mess around with restricted areas unless you have a damn good reason.

>> I don't buy it. How often do you hear of a passenger plane getting shot down

> At least within the US, entering a restricted area without authorization can result in your own personal military air show, followed by lots of questioning, possibly prison, losing your license or both. You don't mess around with restricted areas unless you have a damn good reason.

You're not taking my point.

I don't know about you, but I would sure as hell prefer prison over myself and hundreds of other people falling from 40,000 feet.

> ...I would sure as hell prefer prison over myself and hundreds of other people falling from 40,000 feet.

On the one hand, that would be ideal.

On the other hand, that appears to be a NOTAM restricting access to an active war zone. It is truly tragic, and should be avoided whenever reasonably possible, but sometimes civilians who enter war zones get killed.

So, (just so you know) the "they flew into an active war zone" bit is probably the reason why your point is being brushed aside. Restricted airspace is restricted airspace. Unless you're on the unrestricted craft list, you simply don't enter it.

To my reading it's very understated if that is the entire text of the NOTAM - I would have liked it to say WAR ZONE or GUIDED MISSILES in there somewhere.

Compare it to the DC SFRA[0] which specifically states "MAY USE DEADLY FORCE" even though that's extremely unlikely to happen.

When Flight Restrictions are active in FAA controlled airspace, ATC will often clear you through them if you're on an appropriate flight plan without you needing to ask. Even the 'deadly force' SFRA above is essentially handled for you so long as you file an IFR flight plan.

[0]: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/us_restrictions...

When I'm flight planning and I see a restricted area along my route, I honestly don't need to know why. I'm not going there unless the controlling agency gives me authorization and I understand the danger. Because there is danger; otherwise it wouldn't be restricted.

If it makes you feel better, here's the current TFR over eastern Ukraine. It even explicitly says "danger" - does that make you feel better?

TEMPO DANGER AREA ACT WI COORD: 434800N0392400E-433000N0303500E-441500N0302500E-...

There are more risks than getting shot down. All sorts of dangerous activities may be going on in restricted areas: missile launches, dogfights between fighter jets, tests of unmanned vehicles, etc. You don't want to be a surprise guest at any of them. "Restricted" is a single, short word taught in pilot school to get the message across clearly. If a sudden emergency requires entering a restricted area, then air traffic controllers are there to coordinate it.

I mean, I just copy/pasted that into ChatGPT with no other instructions or context, and it seemed to handle it pretty well:

This NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) establishes a temporary restricted area within the Dnipropetrovsk FIR (Flight Information Region) in Ukraine. The restricted airspace is defined by specific geographic coordinates, forming a boundary for the restricted area.

Key details include:

- *Effective Dates:* From July 14, 2014, at 18:00 until August 14, 2014, at 23:59, with the "EST" indicating that the end date might be subject to change.

- *Altitude Limits:* The restricted area applies to flights between FL260 (Flight Level 260, approximately 26,000 feet) and FL320 (approximately 32,000 feet).

- *Exemptions:* The restriction does not apply to flights of state aircraft of Ukraine, meaning those aircraft can operate within the restricted area during the specified timeframe.

Pilots and airline operators should be aware that flights not exempted by this NOTAM must avoid this area or adjust flight levels accordingly to comply with the restrictions. For further guidance, they should consult official aviation authorities or current NOTAM listings, considering the potential for changes.

FWIW, this exact text was probably part of ChatGPT's training data, but the next important NOTAM might not be.

Perhaps. It would be easy to past in an arbitrary one and see how it does. I'm pretty sure it has information on how to decode these in general in it's training set.

That would be impressive because there isn't a standard format for NOTAMs. They are intended for humans, not machines. It's a major problem that safety critical information is often not available in machine readable format, so you can't have a plane's navigation system automatically give warnings if you program it to fly into restricted air space or to a navigation beacon or runway that is announced as offline for maintenance by NOTAM.

I have an AI-powered NOTAM mapper at https://notam-mapper.obliscence.com. It's just intended for fun, but you can try pasting arbitrary NOTAMs into it and check the results.

For those who can't read NOTAMs: This is a NOTAM that was in effect during the MH17 shootdown, closing the airspace from FL260 (26,000 feet) to FL320 (32,000 feet.) In the previous three months, 16 aircraft were shot down in Ukrainian airspace, including one three days before at FL210, which is what prompted the NOTAM. Ukrainian officials should have closed the airspace entirely, but chose to keep it open and issue this NOTAM instead. MH17 was at FL330, so in fact it did not violate this NOTAM at all.

And for some further context: the quote upthread of "NOTAMS are a bunch of garbage that no one pays any attention to" from NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt came after Air Canada flight 759, which would have had >1000 fatalities if two airplanes were a few feet closer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759

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