NOTAM search

Active NOTAMs for any airport — decoded into plain English.

Enter an ICAO code such as KJFK, EGLL, OMDB or RJTT to see the notices currently in force at that aerodrome. Every notice is shown with its original teletype text and a plain-English reading beside it. Only active NOTAMs are listed — expired ones are never shown.

Enter an airport ICAO code to begin.

What is a NOTAM?

A NOTAM — Notice to Air Missions, and for most of its history Notice to Airmen — is a short message telling pilots and controllers about something at an airport or in the airspace that is not on the charts: a runway closed for resurfacing, an unserviceable approach light, a crane put up beside the final approach path, a navaid switched off for maintenance, a temporary restriction over a stadium. Anything abnormal, temporary and operationally significant gets one.

Crews read the NOTAMs for their departure, destination and alternate airfields before every flight, and controllers read the ones for their own unit before every shift. A NOTAM that closes a runway changes which approach you can offer; one that takes an ILS out of service changes what you brief; one that raises a crane changes your minimum vectoring altitude in that sector. It is the difference between the airport as published and the airport as it is today.

How to read one

NOTAMs are written in a compressed teletype shorthand that is deliberately terse — it was designed for slow telex circuits and has barely changed. A typical line reads RWY 09R/27L CLSD DUE WIP: runway 09R/27L is closed due to work in progress. Common contractions include CLSD closed, U/S unserviceable, WIP work in progress, TWY taxiway, RWY runway, AD aerodrome, SFC surface, OBST obstacle and PSN position. Each result above shows a plain-English reading underneath the original so you can check one against the other.

The validity window is the period the notice is in force, always in UTC. A NOTAM with no end date is permanent — it stays until it is replaced or cancelled, and is shown here as PERM. Some carry a schedule as well, such as DAILY 1200-2000, meaning the condition applies only during those hours inside the wider window.

The minimum and maximum levels come from the NOTAM's Q-line, the coded header that lets computers filter notices by area and altitude. Most aerodrome notices are filed surface to unlimited — shown here as GND to FL999 — because they concern the airport itself rather than a level band. A notice about an obstacle or a restricted area carries a real band instead, and where the source stated a limit in words (1500FT AGL, 400FT AMSL) that wording is shown in place of the coded level, since it is the more precise of the two.

The type is N for a new notice, R for one replacing an earlier notice, and C for one cancelling it.

The full text of a notice

Each result carries a Full NOTAM text button. The card shows the E-line — the part a briefing pack prints, and the part that tells you what is actually happening — but a NOTAM as filed is longer: a Q) line with the coded classification, area and level band, an A) line naming the aerodrome, B) and C) lines for the start and end times, an optional D) line carrying the schedule, and finally the E) line of text. Opening a notice shows all of it exactly as the source filed it, so you can check the reading against the original.

Alongside it you get the Q-code decoded. It is the five-letter classifier in that header: the first two letters after the Q are the subject and the next two the condition, so QMRLC is runway (MR) closed (LC), and QMXLC is taxiway closed. The same header records which traffic the notice concerns (I for IFR, V for VFR), its purpose, and its scope — A for aerodrome, E for en-route, W for a navigation warning.

Why only active NOTAMs

Most of any NOTAM archive has already expired, and an expired notice is worse than no notice — it describes an airport that no longer exists. This tool asks the source only for notices in force at this moment, and filters the results again before displaying them, so everything you see above is live. Notices that have not yet come into effect are excluded too: a runway closing next Tuesday is not something that affects you today.

Results are ordered by operational significance rather than by date, so a runway closure appears above an unlit crane. That is the order a controller would want them in on taking over a position.

Coverage

NOTAM data reaches this page through the NOTAC API, which is built on the United States Federal Aviation Administration's NOTAM distribution system. That feed carries the international NOTAM series for most of the world, but coverage is not uniform: some States publish fully into it, a few publish little or nothing. If an airport returns no results it may genuinely have nothing in force, or its State may not be represented in this particular feed — check the national AIS if it matters.

Egypt is not currently covered. Aerodromes with an ICAO code beginning HE — HECA Cairo, HEGN Hurghada, HESH Sharm el-Sheikh, HEAX Alexandria and the rest — are not carried by this feed at all, so searching for one tells you nothing rather than telling you the field is clear. Rather than return an empty list that reads like "no notices in force", the search says so directly. For Egyptian NOTAMs use the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority AIS.

Not for flight planning. This page is part of a game and is provided for interest and training only. NOTAM data may be delayed, incomplete or wrong, and the plain-English readings are generated automatically. Before any real flight, brief from an official source: your national AIS, an approved flight-planning provider, or your operator's dispatch.

Fly the airports you look up

The ATC Radar Simulator puts you on the approach radar at real terminal areas — see the airports you can control, or look up any field's codes and coordinates with the airport code search. Reading a live NOTAM list is exactly how a controller starts a shift; now you can start one the same way.