Hi,
Since several weeks ago, I’m suffering some outdated METAR while i’m flying in MSFS, can be 2 or even 3 hours outdated in the Charts, either Web based or Desktop
Above and screenshot of the current METAR for the arrival airport in the Fenix A320 EFB against the METAR provided by the Charts Desktop app.
Another example
aviationweather METAR
In Desktop APP METAR
As you can see, is not updating at all
@skysail Can you please take a look?
Regards,
Hello! Thanks for posting!
I can confirm that something has gone wrong here. Unfortunately, I can’t tell exactly what has happened at first glance, but we will look into this!
Kind Regards,
Malte
Hello again!
I am no longer able to reproduce this issue. However, I must admit that we have not changed anything on our side so that it can start working again…
I assume this means that the issue could come back. I will leave this topic open - please reach out if you see this happen again!
Kind Regards,
Malte
Hi,
Thanks for your reply, today I will be flying from MMPR to MMOX, both in Mexico, I will update if I see anything wrong.
Regards,
EDIT:
I just hop over my computer to check the METAR, and do not looks so promising
In APP METAR
Aviation Weather METAR
Currently is 14:25 UTC
@skysail maybe you can reproduce the issue at this moment.
Regards,
Desktop APP
Aviation Weather
So… what’s next?
Unfortunately, I am still puzzled.
I can’t reproduce it now; the app reports it as up-to-date. I will try to add some additional measures to track every update to this specific airport, but I can’t see why it is sometimes not picked up…
I will try to keep you posted! Feel free to keep reporting when it is outdated, and I’ll correlate them with our internal logs.
I appreciate your cooperation, and I am sorry for the trouble!
I think I have found the cause! Unfortunately, fixing it won’t be easy…
We continuously fetch weather reports from the cycle files at AviationWeather. That means if the time is between 1500Z and 1600Z, we will fetch /cycles/15Z.TXT in regular intervals.
Now, we have assumed that the file is being updated constantly during the hour that it is valid, and as soon as the time passes 1600Z, they will start updating /cycles/16Z.TXT instead!
Now, it appears that MMPR is sometimes sending their weather reports late. That is, the report is carried out at the correct time - but it isn’t collected (or submitted; I’m not sure how the process works on their side) until after the next cycle has begun! Aviationweather then goes back to the previous cycle and updates that file, which we are no longer monitoring.
Since we don’t look at previous cycles, we don’t get any updated reports until MMPR (and several other Mexican airports) report their weather in time.
Now, there are technical alternatives to the cycle approach that we are using, which involves fetching a single file that is kept up-to-date. Unfortunately, in our experience, updates to this file are delayed by up to 10 minutes! That lag would not be ideal either, in our opinion.
Well, at least we now know the cause of this particular issue. We’ll try to determine if we can do something about this, but the implications and tradeoffs make this difficult. Apologies for the inconvenience in the meantime!
Kind Regards,
Malte
Hi Malte,
Not sure if you do any change, but now, both MMPR and MMOX are working fine
Aviation Weather
Desktop APP
Hope you mas able to found a more easy solution for this issue.
Thanks a lot for your follow up.
Regards,
Hello again!
No, we have not changed anything. This is what I meant by sometimes:
This means that the behavior is somewhat erratic. We only see this delay for a couple of Mexican airports intermittently, so I assume it is related to their authorities.
The behavior will likely be unpredictable until either the reporting assumes normal pace in Mexico, or we find another solution!
So, technically is no way to fix it in the short term, and, basically I depend on the bureaucratic authorities in my country… I will be 90 years old when they fix it 
Hahahaha authorities being authorities! Hopefully we can come up with a workaround before then!
Hi Malte,
In that case, you can close this thread, since the issue seems to be withing Mexico authorities, is no point to have it open, in any case, I hope you can find any plausible workaround in sometime.
Thanks a lot for all your information during this.
Regards,
Hello again!
We want to keep the topic open until the issue is no longer a thing, regardless of how it is solved (by authorities or by us). We’ll track this internally and keep a reference to this topic in case we have any updates!
This way, if other users have the same issue for other airports, they can reference this topic instead of creating new ones!
Kind Regards,
Malte
Hello, I have the same issue. I’m using Navigraph Charts App for windows 10, Version: 8.36.0 Build: a4867f1.
I get there might be a delay but a 7 hour delay? and this has been going on for a long time now. I use an iphone app to get an updated metar because navigraphs is always outdated.
The issue here is that the Mexican authorities report the weather updates too late, meaning that the data sometimes does not arrive in time for us to pick it up because we do not check the old data. We don’t have the resources to develop a workaround at the moment, but we will look into it when we do!
Sorry for the inconvenience!
Kind Regards,
Malte
The issue here is that the Mexican authorities report the weather updates too late, meaning that the data sometimes does not arrive in time for us to pick it up because we do not check the old data. We don’t have the resources to develop a workaround at the moment, but we will look into it when we do!
Hi Malte,
Thank you for getting back to me. I’m not entirely convinced this is the core issue. Can you explain, then, how apps like “AeroWeather,” developed by smaller companies and on the market for less time, manage to provide stable and consistent METAR data? These apps likely source their information from beyond just Mexican authorities, such as the US NOAA. A delay of more than 2 hours seems unlikely to be due to the data source and instead points to an issue in the app’s coding (perhaps?). It’s incredibly frustrating there’s often more than a 12-hour delay—or that the data doesn’t even show up at all. I have noticed this problem mostly with Mexican aiports and it has been like this for months now:
It feels unfair that Navigraph doesn’t pay the same level of attention to this, almost as if there’s a biased decision not to address and fix it (yet) simply because it’s not a “popular” area in Europe or the USA we’re discussing. I’m sorry, but this is certainly an inconvenience for us users, given that we manage to find the “resources” to pay a monthly or yearly fee for this service and expect value for our money in return.
I would highly appreciate it if you could dedicate more time researching this issue, provide regular updates on the matter, perhaps discuss it with your colleagues or escalate it as needed to get to the bottom of it.
Thanks again!
Sure! The reason could be that they have a different source, but it could also be because they use the so-called “cached” resources AviationWeather provides. These are not updated as frequently, which is why we currently do not use them.
I have already mentioned exactly what the issue is in my latest post, and I guess you could say it is a coding issue, yes! We did not think that we were expected to look at outdated and no longer current cycles for updated weather, but that does indeed seem to be what we need to do.
This issue currently means that if an airport consistently reports their weather too late, it will never be picked up by us - meaning large periods of no data as you mentioned.
One possible solution is also to combine the cached results with the live ones, but none of that is straightforward with our current setup unfortunately.
We totally get that! We are planning to look into this, but since we have limited resources we have to prioritize and this is currently not the top priority. I assure you that this has nothing to do with any regional bias, but rather what our users want. Currently, there is a higher demand for online network integration compared to this issue - which is why that currently has our focus. If we had more developer resources we could look at this sooner, but currently that is not the case.
We’ll get to this issue eventually! Again, we’re sorry for the inconvenience!
Kind Regards,
Malte
