Last night our “Alerts” service was activated. Alert data comes directly from the FAA and is refreshed every few minutes. If you are curious if extensive unmanned aerial vehicle testing is happening today over the local patch in Afghanistan, now you’ll know.
When you click on the ‘Alerts’ tab in ForeFlight Mobile 2.0 while viewing airport information, you will see a nicely designed listing of obstruction, runway, taxiway, TFR and other alerts associated with that airport. We also lookup any TFRs for any airport within a 100 nm radius of the airport you are viewing and display those at the top. This is a convenient feature for our California pilots because most of the state is, well, on fire.
NOTAMs are decoded and translated for easy interpretation. We group them so you know when they were issued and highlight the really important ones. After all, that unlit tower five miles east of the airport has been broken for over a year. Maybe they’ll fix that.
Look for the helpful icons next to certain NOTAMs and the special shading of TFRs. These visual cues will help you quickly interpret what issues affect your departure or destination point.
No more excuses for not checking all the NOTAMs before a flight. See the screenshot gallery for pictures.
If you need an airspace refresher to help refine your preflight intelligence gathering process, AOPA’s online courses are a great way to start.