- The Pilot Shortage and the 1500 Hour Rule - 2023-03-04
- More Frequent VFR Chart Updates - 2020-04-17
- Becoming a Better CFI - 2020-04-08
VFR sectional charts have been on a six-month cycle since I started flying in the mid-90s. The same for Terminal Area Charts, which I started using when the FAA upgraded the Cincinnati Class C airspace to Class B in 1999. Keeping up-to-date charts was pretty easy. I just bought a new Cincinnati, St. Louis, or Detroit sectional when the new one was available. I bought the Cincinnati TAC when it became available, but didn’t update it as often. After all, I had current sectionals.
Once I started instrument flying, I got a subscription for all the charts I used frequently—IFR and VFR—so I would automatically receive my new sectionals and TAC when they were available. It was the easiest way to keep up to date, and at less than $8 per chart, I was spending less than $100 a year on VFR charts. It was a small percentage of my annual flying budget. I didn’t even notice. I was easily spending three or four times that on my IFR charts. Actual flying, of course, dwarfed my chart expenses.
Now the FAA is changing the VFR chart cycle to 56 days to match the IFR chart cycle. In the old days, the GA community would have fought this change. If we were still using paper charts, shortening the chart cycle would triple our VFR chart expenditures. Fortunately, these days, most of us use digital charts through an EFB like Foreflight or Garmin Pilot. So for us, this change is a benefit rather than a cost.
I see two immediate benefits of this change.
First, reducing the number of NOTAMs is a boon for all pilots. More NOTAMs can cause important notices to be buried in a mound of information. How many times have you gotten an online briefing and felt like you were reading War and Peace when you got to the NOTAMs? We often find ourselves scanning through the NOTAMs looking for things that will actually affect our flight. We couldn’t care less about a new tower twenty-five miles away in the opposite direction of our flight. Or the new runway length at an airport northeast of our departure airport when we’re flying southwest. The problem is, in scanning through the NOTAMs we risk missing something important, like the localizer being out at an airport along our route that we may have to use as an alternate if afternoon thunderstorms force a change of plans.
Second, too many VFR-only pilots tend to only look at the NOTAMs for their departure and arrival airports and rely on their charts for the rest. I don’t advocate this, but recognize that it happens. A lot. Such a pilot could easily miss an airspace NOTAM, or worse a NOTAM about a change at an unplanned alternate airport. Having those changes available on our charts sooner will make us all safer.
Of course, missing NOTAMs is no defense. The FAA certainly won’t excuse your actions if you’re involved in a mishap that could have been prevented had you read the NOTAM. But I’m not talking about enforcement actions here. I’m talking about safety. The NOTAM issue is one that has been—and continues to be—discussed at great length. While more frequent VFR chart updates doesn’t solve all the problems, it’s a step in the right direction.