A NOTAM Glitch Is One Thing; The FAA Mysteriously Deleted Canadian And Mexican Information From Border Area Sectionals

Pilots flying near the Canadian or Mexican borders now lack detailed aeronautical information on the foreign cross-border areas they often traverse to reach U.S. airports after the FAA deleted it from new sectional charts. Despite queries as to why, the Agency remains mum.

While the NOTAM system outage that caused the FAA to issue ground-stops in U.S. airspace on Wednesday has focused the media on the nation’s air traffic control system, the FAA’s move to delete cross-border information from sectionals raises more serious questions about its approach to safety and resourcing.

Last week, AVweb reported that in late December, pilots noticed that the FAA had deleted a considerable chunk of the typically included aeronautical information from non-U.S. airspace from its latest sectional charts.

Sectional aeronautical charts are local-area maps (in paper or digital form) used by pilots for navigation in visual and instrument meteorological conditions. They include topographic information, visual checkpoints and landmarks. Specific aeronautical information includes visual and radio aids to navigation, airports, controlled airspace, restricted areas, obstructions, and related data. The charts are updated every 56 days.

FAA sectionals for areas like Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul), Brownsville (Texas) and New York have long included details like those above for nearby Canadian and Mexican airspace/territory. But the deletion of much of that detail in the latest charts was announced last Fall in an easy-to-miss single-paragraph Charting Notice that said the foreign areas included on sectionals would be “skeletonized.”

What’s driving the change? The FAA has not responded to a query made earlier this week nor has it offered any explanation to other media outlets. However, I checked with the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and they offered the following explanation based upon what they understand regarding the issue so far:

“The concerns came as a result of FAA not receiving Aeronautical Information Services data from foreign air navigation service providers [ANSPs — Canada, Russia, Mexico] in a timely enough fashion to keep up with our new 56-day charting cycle,” AOPA communications director, Eric Blinderman says. “That lag could have resulted in foreign data being as much as one chart cycle behind.”

Blinderman added that the Agency apparently determined that the tardy information transfer from foreign ANSPs was causing too much liability for the FAA. As such, it elected to cease charting the foreign data. “So, FAA’s guidance is now for pilots to purchase foreign aeronautical charts as needed.”

I reached out to Canadian ANSP, NAV Canada asking whether it is unable or unwilling to meet the FAA’s 56-day sectional chart update schedule. The privately held, Ottawa-based company had not responded by late afternoon.

In the meantime, the FAA’s purported liability concern means that, as its Charting Notice states, “Only major airports, NAVAIDs and airways shall be charted in foreign areas. These will be in screened black.”

The lack of additional detail has upset pilots who point out that when cutting across nearby foreign airspace in places like eastern Maine, the paucity of up-to-date information makes emergency diverts to small, currently unlisted, airports/airstrips more difficult. The need to purchase foreign charts to surmount the problem is being criticized as well.

As AVweb noted, “Canadian airspace, particularly in Southern Ontario and the Atlantic provinces, gets as much or more U.S. traffic as domestic use as American operators overfly Canada to get to U.S. destinations. Canadian pilot groups have also flagged the changes and are querying their authorities about it.”

Caught up in addressing the NOTAM stand down, the FAA may not turn its attention to the sectionals issue soon. Confirming its concerns about liability may not satisfy U.S. pilots and citing a lack of timely information from Canadian and Mexican ANSPs may be politically unpalatable to the Agency and the broader Department of Transportation.

But not addressing the issue head on is not helping the U.S. air transportation infrastructure ease the flight delays that have plagued it since last summer. Whether you’re flying privately or commercially, the discord over the deletion of foreign aeronautical information in U.S. sectionals could affect your schedule and your wallet.