Some events may require the issuance of several NOTAM from one Digital NOTAM encoding.
Typical events are:
- airspace activities in the vicinity of airports or
- airspace activities affecting more than one FIR or
- outages of navigation aids affecting serving several airports and/or FIR.
- establishment of ATS airspaces serving more than one airport
- obstacles
For more details on affected events, refer to dedicated scenarios.
From a Digital NOTAM point of view, this requires that an Event can have several NOTAM associated.
This is supported by the AIXM Event schema.
From a NOTAM point of view, it has to be assured that the NOTAM appear correctly in the relevant en-route and airport Pre-Flight Information Bulletins (PIB) and that duplications in PIB (e.g. in the FIR) are avoided. Depending on the number of affected airports and FIR, NOTAM format limitations such as the limitation of Item A (maximum 7 FIR or 1 airport), NOTAM series allocation or other national requirements, different options exists to assure correct PIB appearances. The NOTAM for the en-route and airport part of the PIB may also be combined, provided NOTAM rules are respected. This is often done to reduce the number of NOTAM issued.
Most frequently done in practice is serving one airport and its associated FIR by one NOTAM, and issue any additional airport (or FIR) NOTAM separately or completely separating FIR from airport NOTAM and issuing one NOTAM for the FIR or FIR(s) and one NOTAM for each airport.
Airport PIB is served by q-line qualifier scope A, the airport affected is indicated in Item A.En-route PIB is served by q-line qualifier scope E or W (depending on the event), the FIR(s) affected is indicated in Item A or in case of NOTAM combining scope AE or AW, can be derived from the q-line FIR or more frequently by database association of the airport indicated in Item A.
Correlation of NOTAM scope and Item A:
Scope A → Item A: 1 airport
Scope W → Item A: 1 or several FIR (max 7)
Scope E → Item A: 1 or several FIR (max 7)
Scope AW → Item A: 1 airport
Scope AE → Item A: 1 airport
For further details refer to OPADD.
The dedicated scenarios provide the rules for NOTAM containing the designator of one (or more) FIR (scope W or E) in Item A and those for a combined NOTAM (scope AW or AE) containing the designator of the affected airport in Item A. This NOTAM is referred to as “first NOTAM” in the dedicated scenarios.
If the issuance of additional airport (scope A) NOTAM are required (or for any other airport NOTAM if not combined with the en-route one), each airport NOTAM is issued separately in accordance with the following rules and is referred to as “additional NOTAM” or “for the rest of the NOTAM”:
Q-line:
FIR: Insert the designator of the overlying FIR of the airport indicated in Item A
Q code: Insert the q codes as indicated in the dedicated scenario.
Normally this is the code referring to the event. For events where the normal code cannot be used (SAA.ACT and SAA.NEW), QFALT is used instead.
traffic: Pre-filled according to ICAO doc 8126 NSC for the selected Q-code
purpose: Pre-filled according to ICAO doc 8126 NSC for the selected Q-code
scope: A
lower limit: 000
upper limit: 999
Geo reference: Insert the coordinations of the ARP (aerodrome reference point) of the airport indicated in Item A
Item A: Insert the airport affected
Item E: Insert the text as indicated in the dedicated scenarios.
As a pure aerodrome NOTAM (scope A) does not allow the use of items F and G and appears for an aerodrome only in PIB,
information about the vertical extend may be added to Item E as follows for those scenarios with an Item F and G:
For the SAA.ACT scenario, complete the text indicated in the dedicated scenario upto completing
TD.AirspaceActivation.status(3) or BL.name(2)including comma, followed by "from", followed by the value contained in Item F
of the first NOTAM including unit of measurement, followed by "to", followed by value contained in Item G of the first NOTAM
including unit of measurement, followed by full stop.
For the SAA.NEW scenario, complete text indicated in the dedicated scenario upto BL.geometryComponent(6) including fullstop,
followed by the value contained in Item F of the first NOTAM including unit of measurement,
followed by "to" followed by value contained in Item G of the first NOTAM including unit of measurement, followed by a full stop.
Examples:
Aerobatics will take place:
2NM radius centred on 483052N 0092008E. From 2000FT AMSL to FL100.
Item F/G: Do not exist for scope A NOTAM. If required, (e.g. in case of an additional NOTAM providing only the information for the navigation warning), insert the vertical limits in Item E.