From the editor: International insights

There’s no doubting the thrill and sense of accomplishment you feel making trips like these. To properly plan for them, you’ll need to go to the usual sources—such as government aviation agencies; professional support services like Universal Weather and Aviation Inc.; as well as iPad standbys like Foreflight, Garmin Pilot, or Jeppesen Flite Deck.

But traps await the unwary. Some probably won’t show up on your iPad. In impact, they can range from embarrassment to outright danger. Land at a closed airport and you could ante up for a big fine. Certain airport procedures and runway layouts can be confusing. Critical information may be buried in the densest, most unreadable bureaucratese, of the kind routinely published in quantity in notams for international flights.

Some of my pandemic-induced reading binges have included a free weekly International Ops Bulletin email newsletter and a website/blog run by OpsGroup (www.ops.group), an information-sharing firm that specializes in providing the inside scoop from pilots who actively fly the flight levels internationally. It’s also on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Near the top of every pilot’s bucket list is a transatlantic crossing. There’s no doubting the thrill and sense of accomplishment you’ll feel making trips like these.OpsGroup got its start after the 2014 shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) over Ukraine. The Boeing 777 was felled by a Russian-made missile, and was huge news at the time. What wasn’t reported was that 16 other aircraft—some military, some transport—also were shot down over Ukraine in the three months before MH17.

The Ukraine civil aviation authority knew about these shootdowns, and so did a handful of airlines, according to OpsGroup. A warning was published. It was buried in a lengthy, acronym-laden, unreadable notam. The notam was in MH17’s cockpit on the day it crashed. “What if the message was clear and simple?” asks OpsGroup founder Mark Zee—a former airline pilot. “What if it said Just so you know, in the last three months, 16 aircraft have been shot down in the eastern part of Ukraine….” Since then, Zee has been leading a crusade to bring plain English to what OpsGroup calls “bull$**t” notams.

OpsGroup also offers some neat tutorial and other downloads, for a price. Dreaming about that crossing? You’d want to get “My First North Atlantic Flight is Tomorrow,” which runs $25, is loaded with must-know items, and has a plotting and planning chart.

Other charts, such as a risk map and a world permit map, are also available. There’s also a “Permit Book” ($180) and “The Guide to Getting Unusual Permits” ($100), which also contains the forms you may need in case you’re planning on going to exotic locales with intricate entry dances.

Daily briefs and a lot more are available to OpsGroup members, which now number some 7,000 pilots and flight departments. Unfortunately, those free weekly bulletins are coming to an end. OpsGroup is going to a members-only format beginning “sometime in 2021.” Memberships will come in three tiers. A Personal membership is $45 per month and is aimed at owner-pilots; Small Team and Large Team memberships are for airline and corporate flight departments. Members benefit from content that provides field reports (the juiciest are anonymous, and rate handlers, FBOs, and other personnel on their competence), COVID-19 procedural updates, airspace risks and hot spots, news on how to dodge European travel bans, and negotiate quarantine requirements.

I’m debating a personal membership. All that inside news and gossip is somehow oddly addictive. Plus, it’s entertaining to vicariously experience the beating heart of international flying.

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