General Aviation Weather Service in Finland Klaus Haikarainen

General Aviation Weather Service in Finland Klaus Haikarainen / FMI 18. 3. 2010

General Aviation in Finland • 1418 aircrafts (2009; excl. airliners) • 7209 aviation license holders (2009; excl. ATPL) • General aviation flight hours 105 798 (2008; gliders, motorgliders, ultralights & balloons included) • Operations count low if compared to Central Europe • Operations count low especially during winter because of challenging weather conditions 2

GA weather service organized by Finavia • Finavia Corporation • Finavia provides air navigation services in Finland • Fully state owned company • Turnover ~300 M€ (2009) • ~1800 employees (2009) • 25 aerodromes 3

Finnish Meteorological Institute FMI • Research and service institute • Over 600 employees, more than half of them in research and development • Turnover 61, 7 million euros in 2009 • Main research areas • Climate change • Air Quality • Meteorology • Marine Research • Earth Observations • Arctic Research FMI headquarters in Helsinki 4

FMI as service provider • Aviation and military weather service • 4 locations: Helsinki, Tampere, Kuopio and Rovaniemi • Integrated production of civil & military aviation weather service – cost effective • Quality management system and ISO-9001 certificate • GA weather service given by phone from Helsinki • Media: telephone, fax, internet, text-TV • Financing of civil aviation weather service • Finavia buys service & development from FMI at cost price • No direct financing from state budget or whatsoever 5

GA Weather products • GAFOR (BBBB=) • TAF, METAR • SWC Scandinavia (00, 06, 12 and 18 UTC) • • • Upper air charts Web & mobile products http: //fcaa. foreca. com/ http: //lentosaa. fmi. fi/sar/ gliding forecast made as volunteer work http: //www. suio. fi/ennuste - WRF model initialized by GFS data • Metars, Tafs & Gafors available via text-TV 6

GAFOR in Finland Visibility and cloud height criteria Cloud height O 1500 ft D 1000 ft 500 ft M X 1500 m 5000 m 8000 m Visibility 7

GAFOR in Finland • GAFOR issued at 03 and 12 UTC and also 20. 30 UTC for areas 30/39 (northern Finland) • Validity 9 hrs • Forecast areas based on geographical / meteorological characteristics 8

An example of Finnish GAFOR FBFI 41 EFLK 170200 AAA GA-FCST FOR AREAS 11/17 VALID 0412 WX LÄNTISILLÄ JA LOUNAISILLA MERI-ALUEILLA JA LÄNSIRANNIKOLLA SATAA VÄHÄN LUNTA. PÄIVÄLLÄ VÄHÄISIÄ LUMIKUUROJA VOI TULLA PAIKOIN MUUALLAKIN. WINDS 11/17 SFC 220 -270/05 -10 KT 2000 FT 270 -350/10 -20 KT 5000 FT 270 -340/10 -20 KT 0 -C LEVEL 11/17 NIL ICE LCA MOD INC BLW FL 100 TURB NIL GAFOR EFHK 0412 BBBB 11, 12, 14 O BECMG 0609 M -SN 13, 15 O LCA TEMPO 0912 M -SN 16, 17 D ST BECMG 0810 O LCA TEMPO 1012 M -SN= 9

Future development • Graphical GAFOR – or similar LLF • Auto. TAF? • Semiautomatic Low-Level SWC produced on a meteorological workstation? Output also in some LLF format? • Pilots would like to have more & better products, but unfortunately nothing is free 10