Weekend Musings: Why keep known things a secret?

Edition 29

Last week saw two NOTAMs (Notice to Airmen) being published. One for Mumbai, published on Jan 08 and for Delhi on Jan 09. Delhi is India’s largest and busiest airport, while Mumbai is second busiest. The NOTAM at Mumbai is for closure of the airport for an hour daily on Jan 12,13 and 14, between 1200 hrs and 1300hrs local time for a display by the Indian Air Force at marine drive. The NOTAM at Delhi is for closure from 1020 hrs to 1245 hrs from Jan 19 to Jan 26, a total of eight days for practice leading up to the Republic Day flypast on Jan 26. 

Interestingly, social media was abuzz with the airspace closure at Mumbai – much before the official NOTAM came out. The republic day NOTAM at Delhi is a standard yearly affair. Why can’t they be published in advance and not within days of the actual event? 

Since the NOTAM’s were published, it is a scramble for airports and airlines to align their schedules, cancel flights, retime flights and most importantly – communicate it to the passengers. Not only does it take effort in terms of man hours but all of this also requires money. This leads to lost connections, cancellations, sending IRROPS (Irregular Operations) messages, which is a costly affair. 

One would argue that if it’s an yearly affair why aren’t the airlines proactive? In a process driven industry like aviation, nothing else but formal and official documentation counts. What exactly happens when it is out? It is sent out to the concerned planning and scheduling teams, who work out a plan of action. This would involve advancing some flights and delaying a few and the last measure being cancellation. Once the changes are proposed, each airline reaches out to the concerned airports for the changes. For a place like Delhi – this impacts almost every airport in the country. The domino effect means that airports have a short time to revert after checking for terminal, apron and runway capacity. Multiple iterations take place to conclude this discussion, after which flights are retimed or cancelled and passengers informed accordingly. The ones who are to miss the connection need to be rebooked, additionally. This impact is not just local, with Delhi having maximum international flights – airlines like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic get impacted which has a wider impact with their connections to North America!

This gets me to the basic question – Why keep known things a secret for long? The earlier these NOTAMs are sent out, it helps airlines, airports and in turn passengers plan better. In a market where domestic booking is closer to departure, it will have a lesser impact and international connections will have more time to either reroute passengers or change flight timings. Can we expect anything better in 2025?

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