Re: Airport and Navaid data for countries other than the US?

["Keith Brown" <bahalana@wt.net>]

>   Just to set the record straight, the fplan airport and navaid database
>for the USA is derived from the database from the National Flight Data
>Center. I've seen other FAA databases, but to the best of my knowledge,
>the NFDC is the best bet (they are given as the point of contact for
>reporting errors. For example, see the inside of the front cover of one
>of the green colored Airport, Facility Guide). The NFDC web site is at
>
> http://www.tgf.tc.faa.gov/nfdc/index.html

This is *not* the NFDC website, and the data is almost a year out of date.
This is an FAA research facility website that uses NFDC data for simulations
and they make the data available on the site, but it isn't complete or
current. NFDC and/or NASA *used* to have plans to offer current data on
line, but they shelved it. AFAIK, NFDC only supplies the data on 9-track
magnetic tape and you have to pay for it. Also, you have to either find a
friend with a mainframe :-) or pay someone to transfer the data from the
tape to media you can use. You might want to check with Paul Santos, the
webmaster at
http://www.airnav.com
He somehow gets the current data and puts it in a searchable database on the
site. Ask him how he gets the data.

>   I was under the impression that the ICAO (International Civil
>Aviation Organization) distributed airport and navaid data for other
>countries. However, I have surfed all through their web site and have
>not found anything.

ICAO is a standards organization and not regulatory. Membership is
voluntary, and it's up to the individual national agencies to regulate and
enforce standards within their airspace and distribute system information to
the user or third-party publishers.

>I know you can buy it from Jeppesen and other
>vendors, but I'd be willing to bet my pilot certificate that one can't
>legally redistribute that data. It might be legal for someone who has
>purchased the data to use it with other software packages such as
>fplan. (If anyone has a copy of such a license agreement, please let us
>know). But, this would be an expensive proposition for users, and it's
>highly likely you wouldn't get ANY help from the vendors in the way of
>information needed to read it. I would prefer a public domain source
>for this information, but I'm beginning to get discouraged.  Any
>ideas????

IMHO, you're out of luck. Think about the massive amount of data involved
and the effort required to keep it correct and up to date. You're just not
going to get that for free. If you wanted to write a flight planner that
uses Jeppesen for example, you have two choices:

a) write a commercial product and get a license deal to use NavData, which
of course means including this cost in the price of the product
b) write a free product and somehow wrangle a deal from Jeppesen to make
NavData available to users of the program on a subscription basis (of course
you'd have to get them to give you a sample to develop with in the meantime)

In fact now that I think about it, a variation on b) might not be a bad
idea. Linux is worldwide, Jeppesen NavData does cover much of the world
doesn't it? If someone were to get an opensource (tm) company together to
develop flight planning and/or moving map type stuff for Linux, they could
give away the software which allows the user to input his own data, but
charge for data which they distribute on CD-ROMS burned from data recieved
from Jeppesen. That way, all Jeppesen has to do is provide one copy of the
data and enter into a royalty agreement with the company allowing them to
resell the data. Jeppesen is happy because they've got a new source of
revenue, the software company is happy because they're making money as the
only player in a rapidly growing market, and the user gets *much* cheaper
(and reliable) software, since he is only paying for the data, and then only
if he wants to.


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