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ATIS, METAR & TAF

Started by simonijs, Tue, 13 Aug 2019 11:21

simonijs

Good morning,

Taken from Aerowinx Operations Manual page 177: one can request ATIS for up to five airports. (...) The ground station sends a list of respective METAR data back to the aircraft. ATIS and METAR, however, are not synonymous. Actually, in PSX the METAR information - that is received from the ground station - is transformed into ATIS by adding a landing runway and a transition level.
ATIS is discussed in ICAO Annex 11 (Air Traffic Services), METAR in ICAO Annex 3 (Meteorological Service for International Air Navigation). In 2014, IefCooreman described the difference as well in http://aerowinx.com/board/index.php?topic=2095.msg21689#msg21689 (see last post).

PSX's ACARS ATIS request function - to me - seems to be a mix of the ATIS and the MET REPS request function, that are both available on the 747-400 aircraft within KLM's fleet (and on other fleets as well, I guess). A KLM pilot can request ATIS for only one airport at a time, but MET(eorological) REP(ort)S for up to five airports. In PSX one can only request ATIS, but for up to five airports at the same time.

KLM'S "MET REPS", apart from the D-ATIS function, allow a pilot to request METAR and TAF. I think, that being able to receive and view TAF for up to five airports is very useful. Being half way over some ocean, I would hardly be interested in the (current) ATIS, but very much in refreshed TAF reports in order to have a better choice of where to go to in case of (dis)stress.

Would there be room within PSX to facilitate the download request of MET REPS (METAR & TAF) in addition to D-ATIS? I am well aware of "to-do-lists". TAF has been on my wish list for several years, so I can easily wait some more years... (-:).

Regards,
Simon

PS - I can e-mail screen shots of how this is modelled on KLM's ACARS CDU pages.

Hardy Heinlin

Hi Simon,

regrettably, there's currently no room to facilitate TAF downloads. There are just D-ATIS functions, and the next major upgrade will add SIGMET downloads to the Instructor tools.


Regards,

|-|ardy

simonijs


Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

Probably barely relevant, but the Hoppie ACARS server supports both METAR and TAF (and SHORTTAF when available). Add-ons such as BACARS may tap into this.

Hoppie