Notam System Update Begins at FAA, but All-caps Remain

The FAA has started a scheduled eight-month transition to standardize the U.S. notam system with ICAO international standards, including retaining text in all capital letters. These all-cap words and contractions have long been unclear and created safety issues, according to reports from pilots, trade associations, and flight planning providers.

Nevertheless, the agency insists its new notam management service (NMS) will result in “improved accuracy and accessibility of notam information for pilots, dispatchers, and other notam consumers, provide notam consumers with one consistent format for domestic and international operations, and allow for enhanced search, sorting, filtering, and archiving capabilities of notam information.”

The NMS has a “streamlined, modern interface providing near-real-time data exchange, enabling efficient data flows and better stakeholder collaboration,” asserted the agency. “The system is securely hosted in the cloud and has a scalable and resilient architecture designed for high availability,”  making it less prone to outages that have occurred several times over the last few years.

Initially, distribution of the NMS is being limited to “early adopter stakeholders,” enabling testing and validation, and will operate in parallel with the existing legacy notam system for the next few months. Full transition is expected to be complete by mid-2026. Implementation, including backup, was supposed to have occurred in September 2024, according to requirements in the Notam Improvement Act of 2023.