What’s the point of making things more difficult than they need to be?

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71272710371910@reddit

It's just jargon. Like a doctor wouldn't say you have blood cancer. He'd call it by a specific name that denotes what kind of blood cancer it is. Also, for Not ams, etc., a lot of the stuff that seems nonsensical is there for release from liability.

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tomdarch@reddit

Part of the issue is that these systems were built out decades ago when every single character was "expensive." Take a look at the 1st image on this Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem

You'd dial a phone number from a normal phone and put the receiver into that cradle, then the cradle would make sounds and listen back in order to transmit/receive 300 bits per second. At 7 bits per character, you could send or receive about 43 characters per second. Other, older systems were even slower.

Wherever they could cut down on characters, particularly for terms that were repeated often, that would speed up transmission significantly.

Today, we can transmit text wildly more quickly, so "human readable" would be easy to implement in many cases. But once you've forced yourself to lean the old, obscure "code" you feel cool and are prone to criticize newcomers who point out that communicating more clearly would be safer.

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Superb-Photograph529@reddit

Keep the dumb dumbs out the industry.

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flyingforfun3@reddit

200 different cranes in the Notams, buried at the end is the runway closure.

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Superb-Photograph529@reddit

Foreflight is great, but really the greatest thing to come out of it for the GA world is making NOTAMS half decipherable.

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Relevant_Night_9288@reddit

Hey, gotta watch out for them cranes.

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mvpilot172@reddit

But that 55’ unlit tower 12 miles from the airport is just as important as the ILS being out of service.

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bhalter80@reddit

The 55ft unlit tower that's been in the NOTAMS for 2 years

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hoosier06@reddit

Sometimes in the middle.

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ThatLooksRight@reddit

I wish it were just at the end. Instead it’s somewhere in the middle bits.

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57thStilgar@reddit

Phonetic alphabet is to minimize misunderstood information.

Same reason nine is niner.

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draggingmytail@reddit

I still do t understand what other number sounds like 9. Or 3… or even 5 Wtf

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Legitimate-Watch-670@reddit

9 sounds like "no" in German

German pronouncing "three" sounds like "shree" in English

I forget five, but it's probably something about pronouncing the V

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draggingmytail@reddit

German 3 sounds like Dry

And why should we care what German sounds like..?

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Legitimate-Watch-670@reddit

Sorry, I meant that their pronunciation of "three" would be "shree" or something equally confusing. The"th" is difficult in some other languages.

why should we care what German sounds like..?

I don't know, you asked so I told you. WW2 was a thing, so it's just a piece of history that stuck around, like many other weird little things we do, or confusing metar codes, etc. Hey, why is it called a fuselage, empennage, or aileron? Those don't seem to be English either... You'll find them as you learn and gain experience.

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39509835@reddit

And three is tree

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PhilRubdiez@reddit

Can’t stand this FIFE erasure.

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CUNT_PUNCHER_9000@reddit

kaybek

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JasonThree@reddit

Thing is, I have literally never heard someone say "did you see that tango airmet today?" Nah they say, "did you see that turbulence airmet?" So yes it's pointless and outdated but it is what it is.

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t3chiman@reddit

And those IFR clearances. Tower drones on for 30 seconds, phonetically spelling out the waypoints, reading off contact frequencies, expected altitudes if the voice comm link fails…followed another 30 seconds later with “readback correct”. Poor pilot frantically scribbling on a post-it note, or, even more comically, fingerpainting CRAFT information on his thousand dollar iPad. Jeez, send me a text; I’ll hit the ACK button. 5 seconds later, I’m back flying the airplane.

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Mithster18@reddit

Well the FAA isn't the only authority in the world and lots of information still goes through the AFTN so they keep things in that standard I would say, either due to redundancy or the cost/effort to change everything isn't worth it yet

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mkosmo@reddit

Don't forget ARINC still moving oodles of text content in the same formats they've been doing since the 1920s... and SITA still exists doing the same.

In fact, all three networks are still called airline teletype systems in some circles.

Type B messages still rule aviation.

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chicagoderp@reddit

A long time ago, data and bandwidth were way more scarce than they are today. Systems were developed to meet the technological restrictions of the time, and that's why you see so many abbreviations. Unfortunately, due to many factors, these systems have remained in place.

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appenz@reddit

This. Long time ago this was transmitted via morse code, and in that case you wan to keep things extremely short.

Today, that HD movie on your iPad is 2.5 GB which is 23x larger than all the TAFs for all of the US for a year (less than 100 MB). So it makes zero sense whatsoever.

So what you are looking at is old, outdate technology. Which is hard to change due to standards, and due to the government being pretty terrible at innovation.

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mkosmo@reddit

But you can read METAR faster than the verbose description. It's easy to decode in your head.

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Jolly_Line@reddit

The irony is we all look at metars, tafs, etc., on a website, delivered via HTML.

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ketralnis@reddit

And rendered by 18MB of react dependencies

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Legitimate-Watch-670@reddit

This guy web devs.

I once had an aunt send a link to a new family business website they paid a lot of money for. I shit you not, on a good connection and fast desktop computer, it took 10+ seconds to load the front page. It had it's own special loading animation to spin while it apparently downloaded and renewed the entirety of all frontend code ever written.

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VeggieMeatTM@reddit

As a web developer who fondly remembers the excitement when we upgraded to ultrafast 28.8k dialup, I curse the modern JS developers who have no understanding of the scarcity of client side resources and builds web apps that cause my phone to feel hotter than the skillet I use to scramble my eggs.

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Jolly_Line@reddit

lol likely. I will have to “inspect source” later tonight.

Studying up for EOC PPL over here

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appenz@reddit

Exactly. 18 MB of react components and a 30 MB advertising video for GEICO.

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Kycrio@reddit

I like to imagine there's one weather station in Alaska still using a 28k modem so the FAA needs to keep using the same protocol

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Cool-Acanthaceae8968@reddit

Literally 100 years ago.

AVIATION USES ITA2 WHICH STANDS FOR INTERNATIONAL TELEGRAPH ALPHABET NUMBER TWO, A FIVE BIT TELEGRAPH CODE THAT REPLACED BAUDOT CODE IN THE EARLY 1920S

ITA2 CAN’T DO LOWER CASE LETTERS AND EVEN THE ARRANGEMENT OF BITS IS TO REDUCE WEAR ON PUNCHING MACHINES AND READERS.

BECAUSE IT WAS USED ON TELETYPE MACHINES ONLY CAPABLE OF 200-300 CHARACTERS PER MINUTE (OR BAUD, FROM THE ORIGINAL BAUDOT CODE IT WS CMN TO ABRV EVRY WRD OR USE CDE LKE QNH QFE FD FA ETC

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Legitimate-Watch-670@reddit

MACHINES ONLY CAPABLE OF 200-300 CHARACTERS PER MINUTE

3.3-5 characters per second. Trying to imagine all those tower notams print out on a sheet that slow is really stressing me out right now lol.

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LtPseudonym@reddit

This is coming out next time I get asked by an exasperated student why they need to memorize this stuff. Saved for later. Thanks!

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PullDoNotRotate@reddit

You can just say everyone is cheap and what we have is working…mostly.

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asiansociety77@reddit

I know right?

Why can't we just go from A to B safely without having CRM issues in the cockpit.

Some people make the job harder than it should be.

Sometimes I feel like I'm paid to deal with assholes instead of aviation emergencies.

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Weasel474@reddit

Almost everything is a holdover of legacy systems that would be a massive, and quite expensive, pain to entirely redo. Aviation does not like change.

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JAMONLEE@reddit

There you have it folks, safety first! Except when it come at a cost

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ce402@reddit

A simple, proven, reliable system that requires effort from the end user is the definition or safety first.

Sorry if you have to learn something to participate. Most of us can read and process a METAR faster than the translated plain text.

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AIRdomination@reddit

Yeah, no. That’s not how safety works. You just get some sort of fulfillment out of this.

If you’re actually arguing that switching to plain English doesn’t make this easier and safer because it costs money, you need to reevaluate the word “safety.”

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JAMONLEE@reddit

Nope. That’s just backwards logic people like you use to justify your “it’s always been this way” approach.

I’ve learned it, appreciate you making sure though. There are better systems. In fact I think we will see a revamp of NOTAMS soon because of similar improvements. Fly safe buddy, cheers!

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OutOfBase@reddit

Tango is one letter - T.

Zulu is one letter - Z.

Sierra is one letter - S.

You seeing a pattern here? That's how the system was built, long before tik-tok and smartphones. Back when bandwidth was a lot more limited and data was a lot more precious.

It's typical for a gen-z to come along and not understand the world before iPads.

And yes, the system is growing long in the tooth and needs modernization. In the meantime, I'd suggest a history lesson.

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AIRdomination@reddit

Your tags say you’re a CFI but I can’t imagine anyone asking you a question if this is how you respond.

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RockinRobin0019@reddit

Why do so many pilots on these subreddits have to be such pricks every time someone asks a genuine question?

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ZOB_oo_land@reddit

It's a brand new account with nearly exclusively dick comments, it'll probably get banned soon enough

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OutOfBase@reddit

Did my comment not have enough "rizz" for you?

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spacer_suit@reddit

Read all of outofbase’s comment history on his profile. Spends all day just shitting on people who post a question.

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RockinRobin0019@reddit

You seem miserable lol

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thepiedpilot@reddit

Muh daddy stormed the beaches at Normandy in a Sopwith Camel, gettin’ all ‘is weather via the telegraph in his Nokia 3310! Back when Cingular Wireless charged by the letter! No he ain’t gon’ pay 2 extra haypennies to spell out Icing when he damn well KNOWS what Z means.

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LowTimePilot@reddit

Don't mind him, he just realized he forgot to request no EWR or DCA for his trips next month.

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Diver_Driver@reddit

Yikes. Who pissed in your cheerios?

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SSMDive@reddit

I think the history lesson makes sense here. The op asked "Why" and the why is that in ye olden times this shit was sent by morse code and "T", "S", or "Z" makes sense only when we are not using smart phone type technology today... So the history lesson explained the why.

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Diver_Driver@reddit

The comment comes across as very condescending IMO. Just offer up some knowledge without being a jerk about it. Why is that so hard?

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SSMDive@reddit

The one line that had any question was about iPads… But it is also true.

I am quite sure there are many people that have no clue how the FAA used to communicate information. And for them, I totally get how they don’t understand how single letters mean a word. I mean how can a person who grew up with the power of the whole internet in their hand really understand teletype?

You took offense… I found the history lesson on point.

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thepiedpilot@reddit

Muh daddy stormed the beaches at Normandy in a Sopwith Camel, gettin’ all ‘is weather via the telegraph in his Nokia 3310! Back when Cingular Wireless charged by the letter! No he ain’t gon’ pay 2 extra haypennies to spell out Icing when he damn well KNOWS what Z means.

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OutOfBase@reddit

Says the guy who couldn't transition from one trainer aircraft to another without help from the internet.

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thepiedpilot@reddit

No sir, I only play micro-soft flight sim career mode OFFLINE, duh

PS I only fly “trainer aircraft” via astral projection

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poser765@reddit

I’m don’t think this is a typical zoomer thing. I’m a xennial and I didn’t understand this crap before it was explained to me 25 years ago. Granted the explanation probably maybe a lot more intuitive sense for people in my generation.

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AIRdomination@reddit

All of this was coded for back in the teletype days and just hasn’t been updated in decades.

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ATrainDerailReturns@reddit

It’s old outdated shit no one is changing

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Valid__Salad@reddit

Probably an extension of when the FAA had to pay per bit of data used. The same reason the METARs are coded. They would transmit these bits of info and the longer they were in textual format, the more they had to pay.

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coleary11@reddit

As someone who got their ratings in 2011-2014, I still generally think raw metars and tafs are faster to read.

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ZOB_oo_land@reddit

Yeah I like raw form METARs and TAFs. Almost nothing else though, raw winds aloft are just annoying.

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taxcheat@reddit

More like a holdover from the telegraph. A lot of this nonsense is from the 1920s.

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loose_as_a_moose@reddit

Overall the metar // taf isn’t that bad BUT the NOTAM system is fucken atrocious. There should be much better ways of displaying and organising critical info relevant to the operation, including being able to acknowledge & dismiss notices.

Unless something has changed, I do not need nor care to think about the unlit tower 300ft 5nm south of the field. It’s been there five years and if I’m 500ft at 5nm the tower isn’t high on my priorities.

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EliteEthos@reddit

Is it difficult?

I’ll make sure to let the FAA know that Cheebus on Reddit thinks so…

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bottomfeeder52@reddit

I do think it’s kind of funny that we have to remember all these random acronyms for TAFs and such due to old tech. maybe one day it will become the way of ADF/NDB

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LowTimePilot@reddit

I think the simple answer is that change is expensive. I think it's why we still use leaded gasoline and those vacuum pumps that give up at 600 hours. That said we pay an arm and two legs for everything in aviation as it is so we might as well just eat the cost of modernization now.

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Dave_A480@reddit

Because the format is designed to be transmitted by voice over the radio, on ticker-tape, and so on.

The entirety of the funky-weather-report-message-format is based on the ways it could be transmitted through the ATC system and to aircraft, in a world that didn't have ipads and digital data links

And they simply have never updated it for the modern era.

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ElPayador@reddit

The system is due for an overhaul and switch to plain English 😊

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EnvironmentCrafty710@reddit

Ever seen the chaos one "little" change makes for people? Make a change to a small business system and watch the chaos that ensues.

Now think about making a change to a national system that's many decades old... Let alone the entire global system. The chaos would be epic and frankly would cost lives.

Yeah. That's why we're stuck in the 50s

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norman_9999@reddit

Well for one, we get sigmets from multiple sources, our ipad, ATC, ACARS, etc. Assigning them an identifier means we can quickly determine if we have already reviewed it. For instance, when ATC ask if we have sigmet Tango, it's a quick yes no reply.

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rFlyingTower@reddit

This is a copy of the original post body for posterity:

For example, why refer to an AIRMET as Tango, Zulu, or Sierra instead of just using plain English and spelling out turbulence, ice, IFR? There are countless examples of this in aviation which one would assume should be as plain English as possible due to the safety critical nature of everything. Is the FAA conspiring to sell more online pilot courses or something?

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