Your Flight Service User Guide

摘要

It was almost 100 years ago- August 20, 1920, to be exact-when the U.S. Post Office Department established airmail radio stations at each of 17 landing fields between New York and San Francisco. These facilities later became part of a nationwide network of more than 300 similar installations and came to be known as Flight Service Stations (FSS) in 1960. There was no real alternative to civil aviation weather collection and dissemination.Today, your only real chance to physically visit an FSS facility is in Alaska, where the FAA currently operates three regional stations, each with satellite offices. In the 2000s-after its positive experience with the now-discontinued DUAT service-the FAA began contracting out the FSS function to Lockheed Martin,now Leidos. Over time, technology has minimized the need for human observers and reporters, replacing them with automated systems doing the collection and dissemination.Compared to 1960-or even 1990-the quantity of information managed by Flight Service has exploded, even if our only metric is the number of published instrument approach procedures. But any Flight Service function still can be reached 24/7 within the U.S. at 1-800-WX-BRIEF and at 1-866-WX-BRIEF in Canada. Flight Service also is on the web, at www.1800wxbrief.com.