Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

And I'm speaking to you on the 11th of January, a day where if you were trying to fly within the United States,

well, I'm afraid you're probably having a pretty awful day.

Let me explain why. Overnight in the US and therefore not actually

affecting that many transatlantic flights, the Federal Aviation Administration system failed,

the bit of it that issues no-tams. Now, without no-tams, it wasn't possible to

operate safely. And so while they were fixing it, effectively, they put a ground stop on pretty

much everywhere. They had to lift the ground stop at Newark in New York and also in Atlanta, Georgia, because frankly, planes were coming into land and there wasn't anywhere to put them.

So they let pilots, I guess, at their own discretion, leave.

But it did bring into focus what the heck is a Notam and what do they do and why is it important

that you know all about them?

Well, Notam introduced in 1947 stood for Notices to Air Men.

It's now, quite rightly, notices to air missions. And that, of course, removes the

gender stereotyping and also means that anybody who's interested in the safe progress of a flight

is also able to understand what's going on.

And the whole idea is that if you've got a flight from A to B,

then there will be a number of notams that are affecting your journey.

I've just been having a look at a few on a website which is just notam info.com and it's just got a really interesting selection. So we're told that

there's kite flying near Wiltshire, not above a thousand feet, but just so you know,

there's an unmanned captive balloon in a low-flying area,

8 and Birmingham avoidance area.

This is in Vantage Park in Coventry.

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