By Dan Namowitz, AOPA
The National Weather Service said the weather product, long familiar to pilots as a major component of preflight weather briefings, will be discontinued for the continental United States and Hawaii in the second half of 2016. Area forecasts will continue to be issued for Alaska, the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico.
The FAA, in a June 2014 Federal Register notice of a proposed transition to digital and graphical alternatives, explained that area forecasts “tend to produce a broad forecast of limited value. While the Area Forecast (FA) met aviation weather information needs for many years, today NWS provides equivalent information through a number of better alternatives.”
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