Apologies to those users who haven't been able to access the NOTAMs these last 10 days. While I was in far-off Nicaragua, the database was corrupted. I couldn't access my PC, so you had to wait for my return. The only suitable backup was taken on the 4th of April, so that's the one I've chosen. If you joined the site since then, you'll have to rejoin. If you've made any changes to your account since then, you'll have to redo them. Sorry about that... :0(

It turns out that there are a lot of non-deliverable emails being sent from this web site every day. I have just deleted no fewer than 1.1 million email failure messages, accumulated over 12 years. These messages caused the 'maximum number of files allowed' on the web site to be exceeded. This has caused a stop to all emails these last few days.

Today, I have no less than 5,000 failure messages. ie. There are 5,000 registered users asking for an email, but supplying an invalid address. This rate of failure will have caused many genuine emails not to be delivered.

Now that I'm aware of them, I'll keep a check on them. If your emails have not been delivered, you should check your email address on the database pronto.

At a minimum, these accounts will have their email turned off. I may delete the accounts completely. You have been warned...

The bots have been stopped. Hopefully, that may make the emails more consistent, since the website will no longer be sending them to the bots' fake accounts. The bots turned out to all Russian, apart from one Ukrainian.

The NOTAM export routine has been faulty for months. Unfortunately, nobody told me until yesterday, so it didn't get fixed. It now is fixed. There is a lesson here...

Problem number one: Lots of bots have been creating hundreds of fake accounts every day.

I have been deleting them, and I may have accidentally deleted some genuine accounts by mistake. Sorry for that. If this has happened to you, please re-register. There is now a 'Captcha' question to try and eliminate the bots. This will appear after you submit your account, and is a simple arithmetic question e.g. '7+6 ='.

Problem number two: This site was originally written for 1,000 users. There are now about 29,000 registered users. This has caused email problems. (My ISP has a daily email allowance, which the site does not exceed. However, they insist on dividing that allowance by 24 to get an allowance per hour). There are too many people wanting their emails at 6,7 or 8 in the morning, and some are going missing. This is, of course, not helped when several hundred bots are causing registration emails to be created.

I will be changing the times emails are delivered soon, to better spread them out over the day.

I've managed to find a new source of NOTAMs - the FAA in the U.S.

This has resulted in a few problems: a) Most, but not all, European airfields are covered. b) Even if the FAA recognises an airfield, some have NOTAMs missing. This seems to vary widely between countries; some are fine, others less so.

I used to get the data from the UK's AIS website. This, however, was complicated, has been complicated even more, and is non-functional more often than working. One of the bugs I reported is 'issue 76,800'!

NOTAMs for the UK come from the file at https://nats-uk.ead-it.com/cms-nats/opencms/en/Briefing/contingency-pibs/
(the 'Full UK PIB - XML format' at the bottom of the page). This is provided by Eurocontrol, who want 4,500 EUR for access to all of them. If you can provide me with a link to similar files for other countries, please do so, and I'll use them instead.

Thanks for your patience.

A week ago, I was informed that the NATS website was going to be changed 'in a couple of weeks'. I've now been informed that the NATS website will go down tomorrow the 12th August at 8:00, and be replaced by a new one at 12:00 that same day.

I do not know anything about this new website, so I will have to change my own website code to accommodate the changes. This may take several days. Sorry about that.

The good news for UK NOTAMs is that I've been working on using a data file instead for the UK, and that the new file-based routine is up and running. So UK NOTAMs will be continuously available, despite the change.