The FAA plans to let pilots report outages and erroneous readings from automated airport weather stations through a public webform, and to show the status of every AWOS and ASOS station on a public dashboard. The agency published a Federal Register notice on October 6, 2026 seeking final Paperwork Reduction Act clearance for the Surface Weather Status Dashboard, which will sit on the FAA’s existing Aviation Weather Cameras website. Public comments are due November 5, 2026.
Once a report is verified, the FAA creates a trouble ticket for technicians, and the dashboard is supposed to show the station’s updated status within 30 minutes. Congress required the dashboard in Section 332 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024.
What the FAA Is Building
The system has three parts:
| Piece | What it does |
|---|---|
| “Report a Problem” webform | Anyone can report an outage or bad data at a specific station |
| Remote Monitoring and Logging System (RMLS) | Verified reports become trouble tickets for FAA, NOAA, or non-federal technicians |
| Surface Weather Status Dashboard | Shows real-time service status of AWOS/ASOS stations, updated within 30 minutes of a ticket |
The notice says anyone may use the form, and it names pilots, meteorologists, and members of the public as examples. There’s no limit on how many reports one person can submit.
The process is in its last approval step. The FAA published a 60-day notice on May 11, 2026 (91 FR 25753). The October notice opens the 30-day comment window at the Office of Management and Budget. OMB hasn’t assigned a control number yet; the notice lists it as 2120-XXXX. The collection is formally a new one, so it isn’t fully approved until OMB signs off.
Why This Matters More Than It Sounds
Automated weather stations are easy to trust. They report in a clean, official format, they update on schedule, and nobody is on the field to second-guess them. When a sensor drifts or fails, the report often keeps going out as if nothing were wrong.
The parameter that matters most is the altimeter setting. A bad setting puts your altimeter off by roughly 1,000 feet for every inch of mercury of error. If the station reports a setting that’s too high, your altimeter shows you higher than you are. On a nonprecision approach, that’s the error that puts you below the MDA without the instruments telling you.
This is why many instrument approach charts include a note for when the local altimeter setting isn’t available: use a specified alternate source and raise the minimums. The FAA already treats a missing local setting as a safety problem. A wrong local setting is worse, because nothing flags it.
Wind, ceiling, and visibility errors matter too:
- Wind errors feed straight into runway selection and crosswind go/no-go decisions.
- Ceiling and visibility errors decide whether an approach looks worth trying. For Part 135 operators, reported weather also determines what’s legal.
What Pilots Can Already Watch For
The dashboard doesn’t exist yet in approved form. In the meantime, ASOS reports already carry signals that a station isn’t healthy:
- A
$at the end of a METAR is the maintenance indicator. It means the system has flagged itself as needing maintenance. The data may still be usable, but treat it with suspicion. - Sensor status remarks tell you a specific element isn’t being reported. Common ones include
PNO(precipitation amount not available),FZRANO(freezing rain sensor not available),TSNO(lightning information not available),RVRNO(runway visual range not available),VISNOandCHINO(secondary visibility or ceiling sensor not available at a named location). - Reports that disagree with reality. A station showing a 200-foot overcast under a clear sky, or wind straight down the runway while the windsock stands out at 90 degrees, is telling you something about the sensor, not the weather.
The second item is worth adding to every weather briefing. Most pilots skim past the remarks section, and it’s the only place the station admits what it can’t measure.
The Open Questions
The notice is short, and a few things it leaves out are worth watching, or commenting on.
How will the FAA verify a report? The notice says the agency will verify submitted information before creating a ticket, but it doesn’t describe how. A pilot saying “the altimeter setting at this field is off” is hard to confirm remotely, unless the FAA compares against nearby stations or remote diagnostics. If verification is slow or strict, the 30-minute display promise starts from a later clock.
Is the volume estimate realistic? The FAA estimates about 1,825 reports a year, about five a day nationwide, at one minute each. That’s modest for a network of well over a thousand stations, especially since faulty stations often go unreported today simply because there’s no easy channel. If the form is easy to find and use, five a day may turn out to be low.
Will pilots see the status where they actually plan? The dashboard will live on the weather cameras website. Most pilots get weather through an EFB or flight-planning service. A status flag that only shows up on a separate website helps less than one that shows up next to the METAR.
Does it cover non-federal stations? The notice says tickets go to FAA, NOAA, or non-federal technicians, which suggests non-federal AWOS are included. That matters: those stations are owned and maintained by airport sponsors, and their maintenance quality varies more than the federal network’s.
How to Comment
Comments go to the Office of Management and Budget by November 5, 2026. Search for the collection at reginfo.gov under “Currently under 30-day Review — Open for Public Comments,” or use the docket FAA-2026-3172 link from the Federal Register notice. The FAA contact is Joel Siegel, joel.m.siegel@faa.gov, 405-954-4341.
Because this is a Paperwork Reduction Act notice, the comments OMB looks for are about the collection itself: whether it’s necessary, whether the burden estimate is accurate, and how to make it more useful and less burdensome. Points like the four above fit squarely in that scope.
The Bottom Line
Congress told the FAA to publish the status of every AWOS and ASOS station, and the agency’s answer is a public reporting form, a ticketing link to technicians, and a dashboard that updates within 30 minutes. That’s a useful step. Today, a pilot who notices a bad altimeter setting has no obvious place to report it.
How useful it turns out to be depends on details the notice doesn’t spell out: how fast reports are verified, whether the status reaches the EFBs pilots actually use, and whether people know the form exists. Until then, read the remarks, watch for the $, and treat any automated report that disagrees with what you can see as a sensor problem first.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the FAA Surface Weather Status Dashboard? It’s a congressionally mandated public website, hosted on the FAA’s Aviation Weather Cameras site, that will show the real-time service status of AWOS and ASOS automated weather stations. It includes a “Report a Problem” webform where anyone can report outages or erroneous data. The FAA verifies reports, logs trouble tickets in its Remote Monitoring and Logging System for technicians, and updates the station’s status on the dashboard within 30 minutes of the ticket. Section 332 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 required it.
Is the dashboard live yet? Not in approved form. The FAA published a 60-day notice on May 11, 2026 and a 30-day notice on October 6, 2026 seeking Office of Management and Budget approval of the information collection, with comments due November 5, 2026. OMB had not yet assigned a control number at the time of the October notice.
How dangerous is a wrong altimeter setting from an AWOS? Each inch of mercury of error puts your altimeter off by roughly 1,000 feet. If the station reports a setting that’s too high, the altimeter shows you higher than you actually are, which can put you below minimums on a nonprecision approach with no cockpit indication. Many instrument approach charts specify an alternate altimeter source and higher minimums when the local setting isn’t available, but nothing in the cockpit flags a local setting that’s simply wrong.
How can you tell if an ASOS report might be unreliable? A $ at the end of a METAR is the maintenance indicator, meaning the system has flagged itself as needing maintenance. Sensor status remarks such as PNO, FZRANO, TSNO, RVRNO, VISNO, and CHINO indicate specific elements aren’t available. And any report that clearly contradicts what you can see, such as a low overcast under clear skies or wind that doesn’t match the windsock, should be treated as a possible sensor fault.
Does the dashboard cover non-federal AWOS stations? The notice says verified reports become trouble tickets for FAA, NOAA, or non-federal technicians, which indicates non-federal stations are part of the system. Non-federal AWOS are owned and maintained by airport sponsors rather than the FAA or the National Weather Service.
Sources:
- Federal Register — FAA Surface Weather Status Dashboard, Information Collection 30-Day Notice (October 6, 2026)
- Federal Register — FAA Surface Weather Status Dashboard, 60-Day Notice, 91 FR 25753 (May 11, 2026)
- House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee — FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 Section-by-Section Summary
- AVweb — FAA Wants Pilots to Flag Bad AWOS Data (October 2026)
- FAA — Aviation Weather Observation Program
- FAA — Aviation Weather Cameras
