The Weather Company Debuts Smart NOTAMs to Save Time in the Cockpit
Key Takeaways
- Smart NOTAMs use proprietary AI to categorize, prioritize and summarize aviation notices, making critical information more accessible and understandable.
- The system groups notices by relevance such as airports, airspace, and equipment, presenting them in plain language for quick scanning and situational awareness.
- This technology helps crews respond faster during weather disruptions, reducing delays and safety risks, especially during peak travel times like summer.
- The solution includes multi-layered safety measures, continuous monitoring, and user feedback integration to maintain high accuracy and reliability.
The Weather Company (TWC) is introducing a solution to save pilots and dispatchers time and energy during critical decision making: Smart NOTAMs.
What are Smart NOTAMs?
Vanmali gave details about The Weather Company’s Smart NOTAMs, stating, “Our Smart NOTAMs transform a process that’s traditionally time-consuming and fraught with data overload into something concise and clear. Previously, dispatchers had to comb through pages of NOTAMs, many of which aren’t even relevant to their flight.”
He continued, “Smart NOTAMs use our proprietary AI system, which guides powerful foundation models with aviation-specific logic, to intelligently categorize, prioritize and summarize what matters most. It’s a smarter, safer way to prepare for a flight or gain situational awareness for an airport. We are proud to be the first weather provider to offer this innovation to our airline partners.”
How do Smart NOTAMs work?
In a recent article, The Weather Company explained, “Instead of presenting a static list, smart NOTAMs leverage advanced AI and machine learning to detect patterns, summarize meaning and intelligently highlight priority items. This means the system doesn’t just filter; it understands context.”
TWC continued, “Notices are automatically grouped by relevance—such as airports, airspace, equipment and navigational aids—and presented in plain language. This intuitive approach allows someone to quickly scan for important items first, without losing sight of the bigger picture.”
In a recent article, The Weather Company explained, “Instead of presenting a static list, smart NOTAMs leverage advanced AI and machine learning to detect patterns, summarize meaning and intelligently highlight priority items. This means the system doesn’t just filter; it understands context.”
TWC continued, “Notices are automatically grouped by relevance—such as airports, airspace, equipment and navigational aids—and presented in plain language. This intuitive approach allows someone to quickly scan for important items first, without losing sight of the bigger picture.”
What are the benefits of using Smart NOTAMs?
Elaborating on the benefits Smart NOTAMs offer to aviation organizations, Vanmali highlighted the ability to classify and summarize NOTAMs as a way to help crews respond more quickly during weather disruptions.
He noted, “That structure allows pilots and dispatchers to immediately grasp the operational impact of a notice without having to mentally parse dense, jargon-filled text. When time is tight, this reduction in cognitive load is crucial and can help prevent delays, reroutes or missed safety-critical alerts.”
Another example Vanmali gave was the usefulness of the technology, especially during summer months.
He shared, “Summer travel means more flights and more dynamic weather, especially pop-up thunderstorms that can cause rapid operational changes. This leads to a high volume and velocity of new NOTAMs for things like temporary flight restrictions or runway closures. That velocity also means a higher risk of overlooking a critical update.”
“Smart NOTAMs excel here, processing and prioritizing this stream of information in near real-time. This helps crews cut through the noise when they are most under pressure, allowing them to focus on staying safe and on schedule,” said Vanmali.
When asked who can benefit from using Smart NOTAMs, Vanmali answered, “Any aviation operation that values efficiency and safety can benefit, whether that’s a commercial airline managing hundreds of flights a day or a private aviation firm operating with leaner teams.”
“For commercial carriers who are already using the tech, like Breeze Airways, this product accelerates preflight checks at scale, while for business aviation, it helps ensure no critical detail is missed, even when staff is limited. In both cases, the goal is the same: faster, more accurate decisions based on weather,” he said.
Are Smart NOTAMs safe?
Vanmali discussed how The Weather Company ensures safety when using Smart NOTAMs, explaining, “We have a multi-layered approach to accuracy and safety, built upon our enterprise AI platform. This includes:
- Data & Prompt Engineering: The system was trained on consistently structured NOTAM data, and the prompts we use to generate summaries are continuously refined through our Prompt Optimization Service to handle edge cases and improve clarity.
- Real-time Monitoring: Every AI request and response passes through our central LLM Gateway, which logs the transaction for analysis. This feeds into our observability layer to trace every summary back to its source NOTAMs. This allows for real-time evaluation of AI performance against key metrics like relevance and conciseness.
- Automated & Human Feedback: We have automatic scoring in place to flag performance degradation or potential hallucinations. User feedback is also directly integrated into the improvement cycle, creating a continuous loop of refinement.
And most critically, because the original NOTAMs are never removed, there’s always a fallback for verification, ensuring the pilot or dispatcher has ultimate control.”
Vanmali added, “Smart NOTAMs are designed to enhance, not replace, the review process. The AI serves to augment, not automate, final decision-making. While the AI surfaces high-priority notices and summarizes them for quicker scanning, the original NOTAMs are always available and directly linked within Maverick Dispatch.”
“Users retain full visibility into the complete dataset, which acts as both a safety net and a confidence boost. Maverick Dispatch launch partners provide valuable feedback to ensure the accuracy and compliance of our applications to their operational needs which helps them make decisions,” said Vanmali.
What does installation and maintenance for Smart NOTAMs involve?
When asked how to prepare for this technology and what installation and maintenance it requires, Vanmali shared, “Smart NOTAMs are available currently for Maverick Dispatch users, and we plan to roll out the technology to customers within other products from The Weather Company, starting with our Pilotbrief iPad application in the second half of 2025.”
He continued, “There’s actually no additional installation or adoption required for existing Maverick Dispatch customers. Smart NOTAMs are available in beta to all customers using The Weather Company’s Maverick Dispatch, our cloud-based flight-following solution for weather-related challenges.”
“Once an airline decides they want their dispatchers to actively use it, they can just log in and start using the feature. It’s fully integrated into the existing platform, so it seamlessly fits into current workflows without any additional setup,” added Vanmali.
According to Vanmali, “There’s essentially no learning curve as smart NOTAMs are built directly into the Maverick Dispatch interface and designed to follow existing workflows. The goal wasn’t to add new steps but to reduce the mental load required at one of the most critical moments in flight planning.”
Vanmali also commented on maintenance requirements, stating, “From the customer's perspective, Smart NOTAMs are designed to be a zero-maintenance, fully managed feature. Behind the scenes, we handle all the continuous adaptation required. This includes managing the cloud infrastructure and ensuring the underlying AI logic stays current with evolving aviation regulations and data formats.”
“Because the entire service is developed in-house, we can roll out updates and refinements quickly. Our internal processes, which include continuous observability and prompt refinement, ensure the system maintains high reliability and security without any effort from the airline's IT department,” said Vanmali.
Those interested in learning more about Smart NOTAMs directly from The Weather Company can request a demo of the feature through the company’s website.
