Trump Administration Renames NOTAMs Back To Original Name
Over the past few weeks, the Trump administration has released a flurry of executive orders. Most of these changes have rolled back changes made by the Biden Administration while some additional EOs have introduced new policy for the nation.
The FAA has been affected by a couple of changes already. On President Trump’s first day in office, he released an executive order titled, “President Donald J. Trump Ends DEI Madness and Restores Excellence and Safety within the Federal Aviation Administration.” The executive order mandates that all hiring decisions for the FAA will be conducted based on “non-discriminatory, merit-based hiring.”
The order also mandates the “FAA Administrator to review the past performance and performance standards of all FAA employees in critical safety positions and make clear that any individual who fails to demonstrate adequate capability is replaced by someone who will ensure Americans’ flight safety and efficiency.”
One week later, President Trump released an additional executive order to conduct a full review of aviation safety. This order came just a day after the deadliest commercial crash in 16 years occurred at Washington Reagan Airport.
Back To The Original NOTAMs
During the Biden administration, Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigeig changed the NOTAM acronym from Notices to Airmen to Notices to Air Missions. At the time, the decision was said to make the term more “inclusive of all aviators and missions.” That change was made in 2022 as part of a larger effort to make the aviation term more gender neutral.
Now just three years later, the FAA has reverted back to the original term, Notices to Airmen. While some mocked the change back in 2021, the term was never really a pressing issue for many others in the industry. From the Air Force to FAA pilot certificates, the term airman was seen as defining a human aviator, not necessarily a male or female aviator.
In line with my commitment to restoring sanity to @USDOT, the FAA will resume using the term “Notice to Airmen” instead of “Notice to Air Missions.”
Also, pilot charts will now reference the Gulf of America and Mt. McKinley. Thanks to President Trump, we are taking back our… pic.twitter.com/kUXcszogg3
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) February 11, 2025
Regardless of what the term NOTAMs stand for, the bigger issue is that the NOTAMs system remains an outdated relic of aviation that desperately needs an update. The information is presented in a teletype-like format. Non-critical NOTAMs like a tower miles away from the runway are ofter listed higher than a closed runway or instrument approach change because NOTAMs are organized by release date, not criticality.
The NOTAM system itself went down in 2023, grounding all flights for part of a day. A recent outage affected the primary NOTAM system. Only a backup system kept NOTAMs from causing additional delays.
Credit: avgeekery.com
