Maryland and North Carolina AWOS METARs to stop tomorrow

Too bad there isn't some spare closet space to house the server in an FAA, NOAA, or other government building. Surprised that a for profit University Foundation needed to be involved in the first place.
 
What’s the plain english impact? MD/NC AWOS falls off the internet?

Airline ops centers can’t get real-time AWOS info for MD/NC and their dispatchers just found out they picked the wrong day to quit smoking?
 
Rick A said:
OK, thanks for the clarification. It was the INC at the end of their name that threw me a curve...
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You can't be a non-profit corporation without being a corporation first.
 
Sounds as if Verizon screwed up, one office not talking to the other.
 
Just guessing here, based on data from late/stuck NY budgets. In the past, NY budgets were usually late, so vendors weren't being paid. Many or most of them would continue to provide services anyway, because they knew that eventually they'd most likely be paid. But they were still operating at risk. My guess/speculation is that at the federal level, perhaps some vendors are guessing that they might not get paid for covering things during the outage, so they're opting out. Complete guess.

It's also been a long long time since a phone company has been chopped up into little bits and sold off, so perhaps they're not worried about that happening these days.
 
Albany Tom said:
Just guessing here, based on data from late/stuck NY budgets. In the past, NY budgets were usually late, so vendors weren't being paid. Many or most of them would continue to provide services anyway, because they knew that eventually they'd most likely be paid. But they were still operating at risk. My guess/speculation is that at the federal level, perhaps some vendors are guessing that they might not get paid for covering things during the outage, so they're opting out. Complete guess.

It's also been a long long time since a phone company has been chopped up into little bits and sold off, so perhaps they're not worried about that happening these days.
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This is all hearsay and from reading the news, so take it with a grain of salt (or a pile). The reason companies are not as willing to run at risk is recent discussions in the capital. Current law requires that the Federal Government make the Federal employees whole. It does not do so for contractors, and an effort by a cross party group to push for a new law to do so has ticked off others who now want the Fed's to pass a law going the other direction which bans the Federal government from making employees, contractors or anyone whole who was furloughed, and only cover those who worked as essential staff.

This is making a lot of companies that traditionally would carry some level of at risk, uncomfortable. And they are now shutting down operations.

Tim
 
I got an email from MAA to this effect. Emphasis mine:

METARs from non-federal AWOS sites in Maryland will
not be available through ADS-B, FAA, and third-party
services for the next few months. Use frequencies and
phone numbers to obtain reports.
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