The AWOS and ASOS Reporting Webform, Bad Weather Data You Cannot Trust, and the Feedback Loop the FAA Is Finally Building

The FAA now has a public webform where any pilot can report an Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS) or Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) that is producing inaccurate data or appears out of service. Reported by AVweb, this creates a centralized intake point for surface weather observation problems - a gap in aviation’s safety reporting infrastructure that has existed for decades. The change has direct implications for every instrument pilot, flight school, and operation that relies on automated weather data to make decisions.

What AWOS and ASOS Are

The United States operates two primary automated surface weather networks. AWOS stations are typically owned and operated by airports, state aviation agencies, or private entities. They report ceiling, visibility, temperature, dew point, altimeter setting, wind speed and direction, and at many locations, precipitation type and density altitude. Most broadcast on dedicated frequencies around 122.8 MHz.

ASOS stations are operated by the National Weather Service and tend to be located at larger airports and non-airport weather reporting sites. ASOS is more capable than most AWOS units - it can detect freezing rain and drizzle, uses better precipitation sensors, and feeds data into the national weather product chain at a deeper level. Both systems supply the METARs, ATIS, and weather products that appear in your electronic flight bag.

Why Automated Sensors Fail

These systems have no human observer watching the sky. They have sensors - and sensors fail. They drift. They get fouled by insects, bird strikes, ice, and dust.

A ceilometer that has not been properly calibrated will report ceilings with no relationship to actual conditions overhead. A precipitation sensor with a nest inside it will report rain on a clear day. A frozen anemometer will report calm when gusts are reaching 25 knots. Experienced instrument pilots cross-checking multiple sources may catch these errors. Student pilots, and pilots without a habit of multi-source verification, may not.

Why There Was No Good Way to Report Bad Data Before

Until now, a pilot who landed suspecting a malfunctioning AWOS had limited options: call the airport manager, file an Aviation Safety Hotline report, submit an Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) report if their operation had one, or contact the National Weather Service for ASOS stations. None of these paths were standardized, none aggregated feedback across multiple reporters, and none reliably reached the party responsible for maintenance.

AWOS maintenance responsibility is fragmented by ownership. A state-owned system answers to the state aviation agency. A privately-owned system answers to its operator. ASOS answers to the NWS. A single broken sensor could affect dozens of approaches before the right person found out.

How the New FAA Webform Works

The process is straightforward. When you encounter data you believe is inaccurate, you go to the FAA webform, identify the station by its four-letter identifier, describe what you observed, describe what the automated system reported, and submit. The FAA uses that information to trigger maintenance checks, calibration reviews, and outage investigations.

Think of it as a PIREP for the sensor itself rather than for the air mass. The form is public and does not require a pilot certificate to submit, which means it can be shared with students, flying club members, and anyone else involved in flight operations.

Why This Matters: Three Structural Improvements

It centralizes the feedback loop. A unified FAA intake form is not a perfect solution, but it provides a single address for a problem that previously had dozens. A pilot can now report a suspect sensor and be reasonably confident the report will reach someone who can act on it.

It creates a data trail. When one pilot reports a bad AWOS, it might be a one-time glitch. When ten pilots report the same station over a two-week period, that is a pattern. Aggregating reports by station identifier with timestamps generates the kind of signal that triggers maintenance priority escalation - something individual phone calls to airport managers never could.

It formalizes the feedback relationship between pilots and weather infrastructure. The long-standing unofficial advice has been to treat automated weather with healthy skepticism. That advice asks pilots to compensate for system deficiencies rather than participate in fixing them. A reporting mechanism reframes the relationship: your observation has value, and there is a process for acting on it.

What Qualifies as a Report Worth Submitting

This is not a complaint hotline for every discrepancy between automated weather and your experience on final. Weather varies with altitude, distance from the sensor, and time. A METAR reflects conditions at a specific point in space and time. Differences during an approach are often normal weather variability, not a broken sensor.

The reports that matter are the ones that suggest the sensor itself is producing systematically bad data:

A ceiling reported as clear when you broke out on an instrument approach and could still see overcast above you
An AWOS broadcasting rain when the field is consistently dry
Wind data reading steady zero while every aircraft on the field is bouncing in gusts

The working standard: does this look like a sensor problem rather than normal weather variability? If yes, submit.

This Does Not Replace PIREPs

The new webform and the PIREP system are parallel, not competing. PIREPs capture what is happening in the air mass. The AWOS form captures what is wrong with the measuring infrastructure. Both are useful. Both have different audiences and different downstream uses. The obligation to file PIREPs when you have useful in-flight information remains unchanged.

The Practical Stakes for Instrument Flying

Instrument approaches at smaller airports depend on accurate surface observations. A valid METAR is required to execute an approach in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). If that METAR is coming from a malfunctioning sensor, pilots are making go/no-go decisions, descent calculations, and approach briefings on data that does not reflect reality.

A busy regional airport with full-time staff will catch a drifting sensor faster than a small general aviation field with a volunteer board and an infrequently-renewed maintenance contract. The reporting mechanism has the potential to level that disparity. A bad sensor at a low-traffic rural strip might never generate organic discovery of the problem - but a handful of pilot reports can now put it on the FAA’s radar.

What Pilots Should Do Now

Familiarize yourself with the reporting form. It is public, requires no certificate, and is worth sharing with students and club members.

Note station identifiers when you encounter suspect data. It takes ten seconds to write down the four-letter identifier of the airport where the AWOS did not match conditions. If you decide the data was genuinely suspicious after landing, you now have somewhere to send it.

Continue cross-checking. The reporting form is a systemic improvement. It does not change the individual pilot’s responsibility to brief from multiple sources and treat any single automated observation with appropriate skepticism.

Surface weather infrastructure is the foundation of instrument flying. The FAA has given the pilot community a direct line to flag when something is broken. Use it.

Source: AVweb

Key Takeaways

The FAA has launched a public webform for pilots to report inaccurate or malfunctioning AWOS and ASOS sensors, identified by four-letter station identifier - no pilot certificate required to submit.
AWOS and ASOS sensors fail due to fouling by insects, ice, bird strikes, and calibration drift, sometimes producing data with no relationship to actual conditions.
Previously, there was no centralized path for pilot feedback on surface weather infrastructure; reports had to be routed to airport managers, the NWS, or hotlines with no aggregation.
Aggregated reports against the same station identifier create the pattern-recognition signal that triggers maintenance priority escalation - something one-off calls never could.
The webform supplements but does not replace PIREPs, which capture in-flight air mass conditions rather than ground sensor malfunctions.