Weather User Guide
This site provides flight crew the ability to look up weather and Notam data for flights covering most if not all European commercial routes.
Given the lack of WiFi on most European short haul operators, this site has been designed that once a route search is complete, the user will be able to navigate between all pages returned in flight with their device in flight mode.
Data provided via this tool is taken from an unaudited source with METAR data being refreshed on the hour and half hour, and Taf data being refreshed every few hours from 0500z.
The following describes what the route search as well as airport searches return.
Display historic METAR data (last 4)
The current as well as the previous last 3 stored METARs for every airport returned within your results will be displayed, if however, there has been a problem syncing METAR data in the last 2 hours, or the third party providers of this data have had issues there maybe gaps or inaccurately timed returned in the times presented in the last 3 METARs.
Find destination alterntes automatically?
If no alternates are provided, this site will find up to 4 non CAT C airports that are within a 250nm range of your destination. If however, you wish to override this functionality and specify preferred alternates, you can enter their ICAO codes seperated by a space in the alternates field option on the search page. This can be useful for a preferred alternate being outside the 250nm range, or for inclusion of an ERA3 alternate as well as the actual alternates.
Aircraft profile for governing threat thresholds in returns
All METAR and Taf data that is returned will be colour coded to ease spotting key information.
Commercial Airliner (IFR)
Generic information and weather that provides no threats are displayed in green.
Generic weather phenomenon that can provide minor threats to aviation or are at least note worthy to aircrew are displayed in yellow.
Yellow is also used to denote conditions approaching or below non precision approach minima.
Weather that provides significant concern to aviation are displayed in red. Red also highlights wind speeds outside aircraft limits (B737-800W) and denotes conditions at or below CAT1 minima.
General Aviation (VFR)
Generic information and weather that provides no threats are displayed in green.
Generic weather phenomenon that can provide minor threats to aviation or are at least note worthy to aircrew are displayed in yellow.
Yellow is also used to denote visibility and cloud base limits that would start to make VFR navigation questionable (3KM visiblity, cloud base of 2000ft as well as windspeeds above 15kts).
Weather that provides significant concern to VFR aviation are displayed in red (1500M visibility, cloud base of 1000ft and windspeeds above 20kts)
Calculated crosswind for preferred runway
At the end of each airport weather return a crosswind will be displayed for the most favourable runway given the current METAR wind.
This site does not have the details for preferencial runway usage or if a runway is even available for take off and landings and is simply returning a crosswind for a specific runway direction, it is up to the flight crew to ascertain if that runway is available.
Due to the way the calculation is performed, if a 90 degree crosswind is calculated the higher number runway will always be returned. For example runway 09 - 27 with a wind of 180 will return runway 27 as favourable. Airports with multiple parallel runways will simply have a wind calculation displayed for the runway direction, rather than a specific runway.
Getting weather for enroute alternates
The great circle route will be calculated between the departure and destination airport as long as the route is longer than 200nm. Then every 200nm along this route a circle of 100nm will be calculated, the nearest airport (excluding CAT C airports) within this circle will be returned with their respective TAF and METAR data.
Obviously this can not take into account actual flight plan routing, but is designed to give a quick overview of the general areas along your flight.
Finding take off alternates if weather requires
If the MET visibility is close to or below CAT1 minimum (550M) then the site will attempt to find up to 4 airports (excluding CAT C airports) within 320nm of your departure airport (Boeing 737-800 & Airbus A321 limits single engine) with a MET visibility equal to or greater than 600M and return these aiports TAF and METAR data. The airports will be returned in ascending order of distance from the departure airport.
The icons on the right of the results represent the departure, destination, take off alternate, enroute alternate or destination alternate airport.
Although every effort has been made to make sure the colouring of decodes is error free and covers every component that a TAF or METAR can contain, the original unedited raw TAF or METAR can be obtained by clicking on the departure, destination or alternate airport icon.
NOTAM User Guide
This site will also provide crews with Notam data for all airports relating to their weather searches.
Notam data is presented under the Notam tab and will follow the same weather search choices, dividing the Notam data into the Route (Departure and Destination airports), Alternate (take off alternates if needed as well as destination alternates) and the Enroute alternates.
Notam text is not as defined as METAR and TAF codes, therefore to colour Notam data this site uses key words to 'guess' if a Notam is a significant threat. Due to this, colours maybe inaccurate and therefore the word the software has picked up on will always been underlined and bold to allow crews to quickly assess the text.
Generic low importance information such as unmanned vehicles, cranes, searchlights etc. will be present in light grey
Text relating to taxiways, degraded or U/S services will be in yellow.
Any text that contains runways, fire fighting levels, nav aids on test or closed facilities is shown in red.
Any Notam that does not trigger a rule and get coloured will be returned in standard black text for crew to ascertain as to its importance.
As with the colour coding for weather data, every effort has been made to return error free and accurate Notam information in a useful colour coded way, however, due to the very nature of Notams being far less controlled this software may highlight a threat as less significant than it really is. Crews must use formal briefing materials to confirm all data observed from this tool is accurate and understood.