Old NOTAMs

"Old NOTAMs" vs current briefing

Pilots and dispatchers routinely check current NOTAMs before flight. When a NOTAM expires or is cancelled, it drops off those feeds — often within a short period. An "old NOTAM" is therefore invisible on FAA NOTAM Search, EFB apps, and most airline briefing systems unless you query a dedicated archive.

The phrase "old NOTAMs" is informal but widely used in incident review, insurance correspondence, and legal discovery. What professionals actually need is a reconstructible snapshot: the set of NOTAMs that were active at a defined ICAO location on a defined date. That is precisely what historical NOTAM archive search provides.

Common reasons to retrieve old NOTAMs

In each scenario, the question is retrospective. Live briefing tools answer a different question — what is active now — and should not be repurposed for historical reconstruction.

• Post-incident review: what NOTAMs were published when the crew planned and operated the flight?
• Insurance or legal dispute: was a runway closure, navaid outage, or airspace restriction NOTAM active on the date of loss?
• Regulatory audit: demonstrate what aeronautical information was officially published at the time of an operation
• Operator quality review: verify dispatch briefing completeness for a past sector or station
• Training and safety promotion: illustrate how published information changed over a period at a given airport

Search by ICAO and date

Provide any valid 4-letter ICAO aerodrome or FIR identifier (for example EHAM, EGLL, KJFK, EBBU) and the calendar date you need. Results are compiled and emailed in standard ICAO plain-text format, preserving series, number, validity, and body text as archived for that date.

You may optionally narrow the search with a specific NOTAM number if you already know the identifier from flight documentation, investigator notes, or correspondence. See NOTAM number lookup for guidance on combining ICAO, date, and NOTAM ID.

Archive depth and pricing

NOTAM History queries structured archive data with approximately two years of historical depth, subject to provider coverage for the requested location. This window covers most operational review, recent investigation, and claims work; it does not replace long-term national archives maintained by some aviation authorities for decades.

Pricing is transparent: €9.99 for a single one-off search, €29.99 per year for a subscription including ten searches, and €29.99 top-up packs when you need additional volume. The service is built for professionals who need occasional or regular access without integrating enterprise APIs themselves.

Building a defensible old NOTAM record

Old NOTAM retrieval should be documented contemporaneously with other evidence collection — not months later when memory of briefing content has faded. Archive email output provides a fixed text record; investigators should preserve the message header metadata and note the exact ICAO and date parameters used in case parameters are challenged in proceedings.

Lawyers drafting discovery requests should specify ICAO locations, date ranges, and known NOTAM numbers where possible rather than requesting vague "all NOTAMs related to the flight." NOTAM History responds to precise archive queries; broad fishing expeditions may require multiple searches across aerodromes and FIRs touched by the operation.

Operators training dispatch and flight crew on post-event procedures should include archive retrieval steps when internal review identifies a potential briefing discrepancy. This complements ASAP and SMS reporting without conflating retrospective archive access with live pre-flight briefing obligations under operations specifications.