Navigraph seems to be missing METAR info for some New Zealand airports. One notable airport is Queenstown Airport (NZQN). NZQN is a busy airport in NZ that gets a lot of domestic and international traffic as it serves a major tourism hub. The Navigraph Charts application says there is no METAR information available for this airport. I asked MetService, New Zealand’s national weather provider, if there was METAR available. They confirmed that METAR is available for NZQN, and pointed me to PreFlight. Would it be possible to add the missing METAR info for airports in NZ that have it available? As far as I can tell, Navigraph Charts does have METAR info for NZAA, NZWN, and NZCH.
Hello Michael! Welcome to the forum!
Navigraph currently gets METARs from NOAA. It looks like they do not provide reports for the airports you mention, which is unfortunate but also the reason why you get the “No METAR available” message.
We don’t know why this is and have no control over it, but we can look into adding other sources as well! The one you linked to is not optimal for our use case though, I’m afraid. We’ll investigate as soon as we have available resources to do so!
Kind Regards,
Malte
Hello.
I believe the website I linked is getting the info from MetService. And from what I understand, VATSIM is getting the same info from them.
Out of curiosity, what is your source for this? MetService is not free to use, and according to this report there does not seem to be an open source of weather information available at all in NZ, in contrast to the raw data that is provided by NOAA.
We’ll still investigate this matter, but at first glance, it does not look like there is a straightforward way for us to achieve this at the moment unfortunately!
Kind Regards,
Malte
I was told that here. The server also has a bot that pulls ATIS data from VATSIM.
Hi skysail
Just to clarify about accessing weather data in NZ, all airlines here use Metservice supplied weather data which is a service each company pays for to access all weather data for the NZ domestic and oceanic FIR’s. The only free access to weather data is the Airways NZ IFIS website which requires a login via setting up a free account and is intended for use by individuals accessing weather for private domestic operations only, it’s a publicly accessible website that anyone can google and access.
Some weather apps can provide some NZ METARS and TAFS from various sources including NOAA, but they don’t cover all NZ airports and are patchy at best. It’s just not as publicly available information as it is in other countries because it’s produced by Metservice and NIWA who are government owned companies.
Doesn’t make it easy or perhaps even possible to try and put into Navigraph products unfortunately, but thats how it is!
Cheers
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Out of curiosity, I might email MetService to see what kind of options there would be to see if Navigraph could have METAR info in the application. They seem pretty approachable and friendly, and least from the interactions I’ve had with them.
And it would be cool to see Navigraph have METAR for NZ airports, especially with the NZ world update coming very soon.
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Hi,
Thank you for your suggestion and proposal to help. It is probably more direct if we hear from them directly, so I’ve reached out to MetService now to hear what the options might be.
Kind regards,
Stephen
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Awesome! Thanks for reaching out to them.
As I said in my previous comment, they are quite approachable, although I’ve found that to be the case with all NZ companies and organisations I’ve had to contact.
And having METAR in Navigraph and Simbrief would definitely be quite helpful, especially with WU12: New Zealand releasing in a few weeks.
Are there any updates on METAR availability in New Zealand?
Hi,
We have not heard anything and will send a reminder.
Regards,
Stephen
Thanks. Strange they haven’t replied. In my experience, MetService replies quite quickly.
We never got a reply, but have sent them a bump now.
Cheers,
Stephen
What kind of interactions have you had with them? It seems like they are reluctant to work with us for some reason, and that might be why they are not answering.
Have you also asked them for access to their data? 
Ok, the bump had an effect. Not the one we wanted though - MetService is not able to serve applications in the non-professional/gaming flight simulation segment. So I guess that is the end of the road unfortunately.
Cheers,
Stephen
That’s disappointing to hear. Maybe NIWA would be willing to provide data. They actually compete with MetService, despite both NIWA and MetService being state-owned enterprises.
Do you know that they have aviation weather as well? I can’t find any signs pointing to it on that website at least 
Honestly, I’m not sure. I do know that they are a weather provider in New Zealand. I’ll have to check if they do provide aviation weather.
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I can’t seem to find anything about aviation weather from NIWA, but I did find this page from the Civil Aviation Authority Of New Zealand.
I checked the link, and after a quick look around I can find one page with username + password protection and another that times out (potentially blocked for international traffic).