Airservices Australia (http://www.airservicesaustralia.com) is the access point for aviation meteorological data for flight planning. This data is provided by the Bureau of Meteorology and is replicated on its web site through its Registered User section. Note that there is no need to register to access this web site; access is via a generic logon which is bomw0007 (username) and aviation (password), both lower case.

The service is predominantly directed at pilots, both General Aviation (GA) and Regular Public Transport (RPT). It is also available to be used by others such as ultralight pilots and hang gliders.

You don't have to register to access our aviation website, but you do need to log on to access most of the products. There is a generic logon which is bomw0007 (username) and aviation (password), both lower case. Note that information for flight planning purposes should be obtained through Airservices Australia (http://www.airservicesaustralia.com).

At the present time there is no charge for this service. Your access problem is likely to be due to you using upper case instead of lower case when you log in.

NAIPS is provided by Airservices Australia via their Pilot Briefing Service at http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/brief. You will have to register to obtain a login.

The AWIS information is located under the "Regional Aviation Services - Location Information" link in the top right hand box of the index page. Alternatively, it can be accessed directly here.

Inclusion of the group AUTO indicates that the report is fully automated, i.e. there has been no human input to the message. Note that AUTO messages may include data from visibility, weather and cloud senors.

These groups only appear in METAR AUTO, i.e. fully automated messages. The NDV group is appended to the visibility meter value to indicate that, as we have only one visibility meter per site, there is No Directional Variation reporting capabilty (as there is with manual reports). The NCD group reports that there has been Nil Cloud Detected by the cloud sensor.

This group reports rainfall in the last ten minutes and accumulated rainfall since 0900 local. For example, RF02.2/024.4 reports that 2.2mm of rainfall has fallen in the 10 minutes prior to the report time; and 24.4mm has fallen since 0900 local.

Upper temperature soundings are available in aerological diagram format here. The aerological diagram shows the temperature and humidty profile for the atmosphere above the station. The latest sounding is in red; the previous sounding is in blue. The latest wind profile appears on the right hand margin of the aerological diagram as feathers and barbs (solid triangles represent a wind speed of 50 knots; a single line represents 10 knots; a half line represents 5 knots).

The aerological diagram is explained here.

If you are having trouble printing the diagrams, you need to use an image editing tool such as Microsoft Photo Editor to resize the image. First you need to save the image (in most browsers you click the right mouse button and select "save picture as"), then open it with an editing tool. There is usually a print or page set-up option to "fit to page".

You will find the data at http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html. Select South Pacific as region.

You can access aerodrome QNH (both forecast and actual) on our website here.
Area QNH forecasts are available here.

The double bar indicates a significant change in wind speed (20kt) or flight level (3,000ft).