Airport and Radius NOTAM Briefing for European Pilots

Drop a point, pick a distance

An airport and radius NOTAM briefing checks a circular area centred on a selected airport, navaid, or arbitrary point on the map. It returns every NOTAM and every active airspace within that radius, during your chosen time window.

The mental model is deliberately simple: a dot and a circle. Drop the dot where you'll be flying, pick how far around you want to look, get a sized PIB back. Pilot-direct, no form to fill, no flight plan required.

Use it for departure, destination, alternates, training-area checks, sightseeing tours, balloon flights, and anything else where the question is what's around this place rather than what's along this corridor. For corridor-based flights, see the route briefing guide.

When to use radius vs route

Both briefing modes pull from the same underlying NOTAM and activation data — the difference is the geometry of the question. Radius is a circle; route is a corridor.

Use radius briefing for:

• Departure and destination checks — what's happening within 10 NM of EHRD or LFPG today?
• Alternate airfield review — three alternates, three quick radius briefings, done in 90 seconds.
• Local flying — circuit work, training sessions, sightseeing tours, photography flights.
• Glider and microlight ops — local soaring sector or a 25 NM range from your home field.
• Balloon and parachute ops — the question is rarely "will I get from A to B" and usually "what's active around the launch site".
• Ad-hoc area scans — "I might fly somewhere near Lake Constance Saturday — what's the NOTAM picture?".

Building a radius briefing on the map

The workflow is even shorter than a route briefing:

Three steps:

• Drop the point. Tap any location on the map — or search by ICAO code, by airfield name, or by coordinate. The selection snaps to the airfield if you tap close to one.
• Pick the radius. Default is 10 NM. Common values: 5 NM for tight local checks, 10 NM for departure/destination, 25 NM for training and tour areas, 50 NM for regional scans.
• Set the time window. Default is the next 24 hours. Narrow to your flight window for a tighter activation picture (DYNAM-aware).

A worked example: Saturday at LOWG Graz

Illustrative scenario: a VFR pilot plans a Saturday morning local flight from LOWG Graz in southern Austria. The intention is circuit work followed by an extended local tour through the Murtal Valley.

The pilot taps LOWG on the map, sets radius to 20 NM, and picks a morning time window. The briefing returns a handful of NOTAMs: a taxiway closure at LOWG, an unserviceable nav-aid at nearby LOXZ Zeltweg, a few Restricted Areas in the Alpine training zones to the north-west, a Danger Area active on the morning AUP, plus several crane and obstacle notices near the city.

On the map, the active Danger Area (DYNAM bold) clips the planned tour track. The pilot adjusts the southern leg a few miles east to avoid it, prints the PIB for the flight folder, and goes. Whole exercise: 90 seconds.

What the briefing returns

A radius briefing is structurally identical to a route briefing — same fused data layer, just clipped to a circle:

• Aerodrome NOTAMs at airfields within the radius. Closures, lighting issues, frequency changes, ILS unserviceability, etc.
• Point NOTAMs for cranes, obstacles, balloons, parachute ops, and anything else that's location-bound but not area-shaped.
• Graphical NOTAMs with effect areas that intersect the circle, drawn on the map. More on graphical NOTAMs →
• Active and upcoming airspace — every Class D, restricted area, danger area, TRA, TSA or other relevant volume with an activation that touches the circle during the time window.
• Source attribution for every active zone — NOTAM, AUP, UUP, AIP schedule, or combination.

Pairing radius briefings for a cross-country

For a cross-country flight, pilots typically combine modes: one route briefing for the corridor between airfields, plus radius briefings for departure, destination, and any planned alternates.

This pairing covers two different failure modes. The route briefing tells you whether your planned track encounters problems en route. The radius briefings tell you whether your departure can launch on time, whether your destination will accept you, and whether your alternates are usable if either changes mid-flight.

It also de-risks edge cases: an active airspace just outside the corridor near departure won't show in the corridor briefing, but will show in the 10 NM radius around the departure airfield.

Common radius briefing pitfalls

A few common mistakes worth flagging:

• Radius too tight. A 5 NM radius around an aerodrome misses CTR-edge activations that affect departure routing. 10 NM is a safer default.
• Radius too wide. A 50 NM radius for a local circuit hour returns notices that don't matter to you. Match radius to actual operational scope.
• Skipping the time window. A 24-hour window captures every activation in the day, including ones outside your flight slot. Narrow the window for a cleaner active vs upcoming picture.
• Treating radius as a replacement for a route briefing on cross-country flights. Use both together — see above.
• Forgetting alternates. A radius check at departure and destination is good. Adding one for each planned alternate is better.

Before your next local flight

Under-a-minute workflow for departure-day checks:

• Open the live map and search your departure airfield.
• Tap the airfield to drop the radius centre.
• Set radius to 10 NM (or wider for longer local flights).
• Set the time window to your flight slot in UTC.
• Review the briefing — start with aerodrome NOTAMs at your home field, then sweep through active airspace, then point NOTAMs.
• Save the briefing link or print as PDF for the flight folder.
• Repeat for any alternate airfields. Each radius check takes under 30 seconds.