Hi, how is live ATIS downloaded? I’ve checked with many European airports and always offline and not available
Hi! Thanks for posting.
D-ATIS from the real world is currently only publically available in the USA. Europe consists of many smaller countries, and there is no such public source at the moment.
You can read more in our blog post over at https://navigraph.com/blog/digital-atis as well as on page 10 of this Eurocontrol document:
Kind Regards,
Malte
But how come Vatsim provides real world ATIS
VATSIM provides its own ATIS. Not real-world ATIS. If real-world ATIS is available to a controller, I’m sure that it will be used to save time of course!
Well can Navigraph not simulate something similar?
We do not have any plans to simulate it at the moment. ATIS is primarily useful when interacting with ATC, and it is up to said ATC to issue the report.
If you believe you have a strong case for simulated ATIS provided by us, please open a topic in the wishlist section so that we can gauge the general interest in such a feature! It would be much appreciated!
Kind Regards,
Malte
Please also note that ATIS is not simply a derivative of the METAR and TAF reports. It includes operative information, and runway selections are commonly based on operating procedures that are unique to each airport. There is no way that we can (and in my own opinion, should) simulate such reports since they will almost always be incorrect and/or unrealistic in the end either way.
While you would probably be OK with just having it derived from METAR to just have an ATIS to look at, think of it from another perspective: It would provide no additional value over the existing runway wind indicators, since they both come from the same source. The only added value is that it looks pretty! 
If we started publishing simulated reports, even as a separate source, we would get complaints that the reports do not match what the real-world airport would have issues (since we don’t know their SOPs). In the end, it probably causes more headaches than one might imagine to begin with!
All the above said you are still very welcome to open a feature request! Take it as food for thought, if you believe that it would still be valuable to you then please motivate it in a post on the wishlist!
Kind Regards,
Malte
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I really do understand where you are coming from and having an ATIS is a nice additional hearing it over the speakers while tuned in or reading the report in this case.
But you are correct it may cause more problems than its worth.
But thanks for the reply though
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Other than already stated regarding the bureaucratic issues of accessing D-ATIS in ~45 countries of Europe, often flight simming requires multiple sources of information. If you can get a D-ATIS for an airport in VATSIM, then load up your client and connect in observer mode or use SimAware to view it. Although it’s going to be heavily limited to only airports with online controllers. There’s also LIVEATC that may have an ATIS freq online for an airport you want. ADS-B Exchange can show you real time flight operations such as runways and taxiways in use by means of viewing the aircraft paths.
Airlines have access to expensive datalink services that would likely be an unreasonable cost for Navigraph (and likely wouldn’t have the legal right to provide them to us anyways as then anyone could get them for a Navigraph sub). GA pilots have to use VHF to get the terminal information when flying in most countries. Even ForeFlight only has D-ATIS in the US. From their website: “ForeFlight provides mobile PDC and D-ATIS at 76 airports in the U.S”
According to Aerosavy:
ATIS on the Internet
It would be helpful (and fun) if audio or data link ATIS were available
on the internet. Unfortunately, live ATIS is tough to find online.
With a few exceptions, official broadcasts can only be received on
aircraft VHF frequencies or from an aircraft data link vendor.
Thanks for the additional input! Yeah, let’s hope that future efforts by Eurocontrol make the date more easily available in Europe as well!
If VATSIM has ATIS for a specific airport, it should also be possible to see that report in Navigraph Charts by selecting the “VATSIM” source. Or are there areas that publish only TTS (voice) reports?
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Ahh you’re right, it does show the VATSIM and IVAO ATIS. I haven’t flown to a popular VATSIM airport in a while (been VFR flying for the most part). That’s a nice addition.
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It’s worth taking a look at https://atis.report/
I stumbled across this website a few weeks ago. Still a bit temperamental, but it pulls real world D-ATIS for airports all around the world that provide D-ATIS (not just USA airports). For instance, I’ve happily been using this in the UK, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and China over the last month, usually always getting live real world ATIS reports.
It still has a few hiccups though. Sometimes the data feed seems to get stuck (resulting in reports sometimes getting a few hours out of date). Also, it would be nice if it could display Departure ATIS and Arrival ATIS separately when they are separately given (it currently only shows the latest one, irrespective if it’s departure or arrival). Sadly doesn’t have any contact information to report issues or give suggestions though.
Still, it’s a good start for flight simming I think.
Unfortunately, that source is unreliable (as you mentioned) and not public about where the information is coming from. We suspect that the data is collected from live ACARS messages, which would mean that the coverage is spotty with a high risk of becoming outdated. This seems to align with your experience with the service.
The source is not disclosed, so we could be wrong. Either way, there is unfortunately no path forward to integrate this particular service into our products.
We’ll keep our eyes open for reliable sources of ATIS data, but this is not likely to be it.
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