What 69,000 Active NOTAMs Actually Say

At 0313 UTC on October 3, 2026, the FAA's NOTAM feed held 69,011 active notices in FlyFren's copy of it, and we sorted every one. A quarter are obstacles. In the US domestic set, half of all notices are a single sentence template: a tower whose light is out. Runway closures, the thing pilots are most afraid of missing, were 327 lines out of 22,731 domestic NOTAM Ds.

The numbers below are a snapshot of one morning, the categories are FlyFren's own, and the FAA system remains the only source of truth.

How we counted

FlyFren mirrors the FAA's NOTAM Management Service data interface (NMS-API) into a database, pulling changes every few minutes and a full load daily. On October 3, 2026 at about 0313 UTC we counted every row whose start of activity was in the past, whose end of validity was in the future or blank, and which carried no cancellation. That gave 69,011 active notices out of 81,280 stored, the rest being future-dated. The feed updates continuously, so repeated queries over the following ten minutes drifted by a few dozen rows; each figure here comes from the query that produced it.

The FAA's own classification splits the active set into 22,731 domestic NOTAM Ds, 5,333 FDC NOTAMs, 5,472 military NOTAMs and 35,479 international-format notices. The international set is a mix: 10,366 are at US locations (identifiers beginning K or P), the other 25,120 are foreign notices the FAA stores and redistributes, as AIM 5-1-3 g describes. Where this post says "domestic", it means the 22,731 NOTAM Ds.

Category and severity are FlyFren's labels, assigned by code, not FAA labels. The FAA does not rank or prioritize NOTAMs; its NMS FAQ says query results "are not prioritized" and leaves priority to the user (FAA NMS FAQs). Our category comes from the ICAO Q-code subject letter when a notice carries one: M for movement area becomes runway or taxiway, L lighting, N navaid, R airspace, O obstacle, P procedure, C and S service, W airspace, F and A general. Otherwise it comes from keyword matching on the text, RWY to runway, TWY to taxiway, OBST or CRANE or TOWER to obstacle, and so on. Severity is a short rule list matched on substrings. Every FDC NOTAM is critical, and so is any text that pairs CLSD with RWY or AD, or that mentions a TFR; TWY closures, obstacles, and lights or navaids reported U/S are caution; the rest is advisory. Keyword counts use the first word of the notice text, which is where AIM 5-1-3 g requires the keyword to sit. Percentages are rounded to one decimal; counts are as returned.

Obstacles are the largest category, and the domestic half is one sentence

Obstacles are 18,325 of the 69,011 active notices, or 26.6%. In the domestic set the share doubles: 13,220 of 22,731 NOTAM Ds begin with the keyword OBST, which is 58.2%. Of those, 11,500 are towers and 11,439 match the pattern OBST TOWER LGT ... U/S, a tower whose obstruction light is unserviceable. That single template is 50.3% of all active domestic NOTAM Ds.

Counts are FlyFren's query of its NMS-API mirror on October 3, 2026 at about 0313 UTC; categories are assigned by FlyFren's code as described above, not by the FAA.

After towers, the domestic obstacle keywords were CRANE (773), WIND for turbines (242), POWER for lines (215), RIG (126) and POLE (103). By day, a tower light outage 17 nm from the field changes nothing; at night or in low visibility, the ones near your route and pattern are the whole point. Cranes are the daytime exception, because their lines state height and distance from the airport, and a 130 ft crane 1 nm off the approach end is a real number to fly against. Read OBST last, but read the cranes.

Runway NOTAMs are mostly lights, not closures

Runway is the second category at 16,546, but the domestic RWY keyword accounts for only 3,102 lines, 13.6% of NOTAM Ds. Of those 3,102, 327 contain CLSD (10.5%), and 305 match the whole-runway form RWY 05/23 CLSD rather than a partial closure. The other 1,986 RWY lines (64.0%) mention lighting. Edge lights, PAPI, REIL, approach light systems. Taxiways run the other way, with 914 of 2,040 TWY lines (44.8%) being closures, which fits construction season.

Aerodrome-level closures were rarer still. Eighty-eight domestic lines read AD AP CLSD, an airport closed outright, and 151 AD lines concerned fuel. On the FDC side, 3,110 notices were IAP amendments to instrument approaches, and 1,656 of them (53.2%) named an RNAV (GPS) approach.

The lines that can end your flight are few, which is a reason to read every one, not a reason to skip them.

The list is younger than it feels

The median active notice had been in effect for 26 days across the whole set, and 34 days across the US formats alone (domestic, FDC and military). A third of the pile is new: 22,342 notices (32.4%) started within the previous 7 days. At the other end, 14,943 (21.7%) had been active more than 90 days and 3,847 (5.6%) more than a year. Among the US formats, 8,573 of 33,536 (25.6%) were older than 90 days.

The year-old notices are not where you would guess. Of the 3,847, 1,369 are runway category and 1,159 are FDC, mostly standing procedure amendments, while domestic tower-light outages, the bulk of the list, turn over: only 1,694 of 13,220 domestic OBST lines (12.8%) were older than 90 days. A separate 5,582 notices (8.1%) carry an end of validity more than five years out, which is how a permanent change reads while it waits for the chart; the FAA's primer says PERM is used when the content is headed for the Chart Supplement or another publication (FAA pilot NOTAM primer, 2021). Of those, 4,139 are international and 736 domestic.

Why a pilot cares: the long-lived lines are the ones you have read ten times, and the week-old third is where the surprise lives. Give the new ones the slow read.

Airspace NOTAMs are drones and jumpers

Airspace is 8,528 notices (12.4%) overall. In the domestic set the keyword AIRSPACE opened 1,339 lines, and 956 of them (71.4%) mention UAS, unmanned aircraft. Parachute jumping, PJE, appeared in 89. Only 51 FDC notices in the snapshot contained TFR text, which says less about restrictions than about where they are published: the FAA's TFR list at tfr.faa.gov and the center-area files are the places to look, per AIM 5-1-3 c.

The trap is structural. AIRSPACE is its own keyword, filed separately from AD, so a filter set to one airport hides the drone operation and the drop zone next to it.

GPS mentions are common, GPS outages are rare

Notices mentioning GPS or GNSS numbered 4,228 (6.1% of the set), which sounds alarming until you sort them. Most are the 1,656 RNAV (GPS) approach amendments above. Only 36 notices across all formats said GPS may not be available, is unreliable, or is subject to interference, and 7 of those were in US formats. Eleven satellite outage advisories sat under the KGPS accountability. Among foreign notices, 62 mentioned GNSS interference, jamming, spoofing or degradation.

The US testing NOTAM, the one that says GPS MAY NOT BE AVBL within a set of altitude-dependent radii, is therefore a short-lived and specific thing, and AIM 5-1-3 f tells pilots to search for it specifically. It will not be under your airport.

Texas leads, and big airports run past 100 lines

We joined domestic and FDC notices to FlyFren's airport table by location identifier, which matched 26,298 of 28,060. Texas led with 5,158, or 19.6% of the matched set. Florida followed with 3,434, then California 2,368, Georgia 2,032 and Alabama 1,876. The 1,762 unmatched are mostly center-area, GPS and security files that have no airport.

By single location, KJFK carried 153 active notices and KSFO 150. Two Air Route Traffic Control Center files were close behind, KZAB with 128 and KZHU with 115, which is where TFRs, GPS testing and special use airspace live. One small field, K74P, had 143 lines. Every one was an obstacle. A 150-line airport is why sorting by keyword, as AIM 5-1-3 g intends, is not optional.

FlyFren's severity rule calls 29% critical

By FlyFren's rule list, 19,996 notices (29.0%) are critical, 30,540 (44.3%) caution and 18,475 (26.8%) advisory. The critical count is inflated for a VFR pilot on purpose: every one of the 5,333 FDC notices is critical by rule, and most of those are approach amendments a VFR pilot can ignore. The rule exists to make sure a runway closure is never buried under tower lights on an airport page, not to tell you what matters on your flight. Treat it as a sort order.

What this snapshot cannot tell you

It is one morning. Construction season, a hurricane or a NAS outage would move every number. Categories and severities are FlyFren's heuristics, and keyword counts depend on the first word of the text, which the FAA requires for NOTAM Ds but not for the international format. The international slice mixes US and foreign notices. The FAA's NMS metrics page reported 74,241 active NOTAMs on a different date, April 18, 2026 (FAA NMS). That is the right order of magnitude, and a reminder that our mirror is a copy, not the system. 14 CFR 91.103 asks you to be familiar with all available information, and the FAA's NOTAM Search or a Flight Service briefing is where that information is official.

What to do with it in a briefing

Expect half the domestic lines to be tower lights. Read them only when it is dark or the visibility is down, and read the cranes by day. Read every RWY and AD line; there are few, and about one in ten RWY lines is a closure. Open the AIRSPACE keyword and the center file for your route, because that is where the 956 drone operations and the TFRs are. The decode and a six-step routine are in How to read NOTAMs, and FlyFren's airport pages show the current lines for a field next to its weather, as supplemental information for planning. Then give the notices issued in the last 7 days, a third of the list, the slow read.

This article is educational and is not a substitute for the current regulations, the AIM, official weather briefings, or instruction from a CFI. Check the current text at the linked sources before you rely on any detail.