News

Good Sunday afternoon to you all.

We are nine short days from the start of the Fall 2026 FPAW Meeting. Our registration numbers continue to grow, with 186 on the books at this time, 86 (46%) In Person and 100 (54%) Remote. We will surely end up with over 200 registrants prior to the meeting. I trust that each and every one of those 200+ registrants will turn into active meeting participants, either in person (recommended!) or remotely.

Along with this newsletter, I plan to send out Outlook meeting invitations to the current list of registrants later this afternoon. These will include MS Teams teleconference connectivity instructions, which you will definitely need if you're planning to participate remotely.

If you have been on the fence about attending the meeting at all (you should attend!), or are debating between attending in person (yes!) or remotely, or are fundamentally a procrastinator (like me), there is still time to register online! However, the online registration form will be deactivated this coming Friday, 10-23-26. Folks desiring to register after that will need to contact me directly (mfronzak@mitre.org). If you go this route, know that, depending on how much my hair is on fire, responses may be delayed.

I hope to see you at the meeting!

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair

Hello, aviation weather wonks.

I just learned that Pantheon, the backend web host used by UCAR for their web sites (including ours), recently updated its server software to reduce the access of their servers to bots, and that this change may have been at the root of the intermittent FPAW web site problems experienced by many of you over the last week or so. Moreover, I'm told that they have reverted back to their previous software version, and believe that the problem has been resolved.

So...

Hie ye to the FPAW web site and register for the upcoming meeting, which begins exactly two weeks from today! And my previous offer still stands: if you are unable to register, for whatever reason, send an email to me (mfronzak@mitre.org) with your name, affiliation/organization, email, country of citizenship, type of attendance (in person or remote) and whether you give FPAW permission to share your email with other like-minded FPAW meeting registrants. I'll take it from there!

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair

Good morning, all.

I'm sure you're getting ready to head to the FPAW web site to register for the Fall 2026 FPAW Meeting, or if you've already registered, to review the finalized agenda or scan the biographies of the who's who of aviation weather presenters/panelists. Should you receive unusual responses (e.g., the broken image symbol or a "Forbidden" message) when you go there, panic not! UCAR's backend web host is apparently experiencing intermittent problems. The UCAR IT folks have submitted a trouble ticket, and expect the issue to be resolved shortly.

Meanwhile, if you want to register for the meeting but cannot due to this problem...

Send me (mfronzak@mitre.org) an email with your name, affiliation/organization, email, country of citizenship, type of attendance (in person or remote) and whether you give FPAW permission to share your email with other like-minded FPAW meeting registrants. I'll take it from there!

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair 

Good day, aviation weather enthusiasts.

I find myself running out of synonyms for "enthusiast," a term that I consider appropriate for the members of this group. So, I did what modern people do and asked the Internet for information about that word. Here's what it returned: "Derived from the Late Greek word enthousiastēs (meaning "person possessed by a god" or "inspired by a divinity"), entering English around 1748. Originally religious, the term evolved to describe intense secular devotion to arts, sports, technology, or hobbies."

Well, I hope none of you are possessed. I find many of you to be truly inspirational. And the phrase "intense secular devotion to aviation weather" certainly sounds appropriate to me.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes, the Fall 2026 FPAW Meeting, the start of which is a mere 2.5 weeks away. There are currently 155 registrants for the meeting, split nearly 50/50 between In Person and Remote attendees. Must be something about the DC-area location, the meeting theme, the session content and participants that makes this a meeting worth attending in the flesh. Speaking of the latter three items, I am pleased to announce that ALL of our agenda TBDs have been resolved, the lineup is complete, and the online agenda has been updated to reflect this.

As I recounted several weeks ago, the administrative work I do with the registration information and agenda provides me with a keen appreciation for the "Who" and "What" components of this meeting. That understanding leads me to conclude that you will not only want to attend the Fall 2026 FPAW Meeting, you'll want to do so in person.

And so, let me encourage you to register for the meeting sooner rather than later. I hope to see you in McLean in person starting on October 27th!

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair

Good morning, aviation weather wizards. If you, like me, consider the CIWS / CoSPA Prototypes to be among the critical tools in your aviation weather wizard toolkit, then you will want to pay attention to the following email text, copied with FAA permission and lightly edited by me. A link to a related slide deck is also attached.

"Attention CIWS/CoSPA Users:

As the FAA completes the deployment of Common Support Services – Weather (CSS-Wx), the NAS Weather Processor (NWP, previously known as the NextGen Weather Processor), and the Aviation Weather Display (AWD), it has established the following timeline for updated support and decommissioning of the CIWS/CoSPA Operational Prototype.

• ATOM Data Feed (users integrating weather data into their own applications) – CIWS/CoSPA digital data distributed to FAA-approved clients via the ATOM feed will be decommissioned, effective October 1, 2026.
• CIWS/CoSPA Situation Displays (dedicated weather “Situation Display” workstations, aka SDs, located at FAA facilities) will be decommissioned between October 1 and December 31, 2026, as AWDs become operational.
• MIT LL will continue supporting the CIWS/CoSPA prototype website, which is deployed at FAA facilities and Airline Operations Centers, through early Summer 2027 (exact date TBD).

Important: This is an advisory update. No action is needed for website-only users. Stakeholders with questions about the decommissioning and those requiring onboarding information about access to NWP data via CSS-Wx should contact Dan Dennis at the FAA (Dan.Dennis@faa.gov).

Regards,  MIT Lincoln Laboratory Operations Team"

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair

Good evening, friends.

I end up "processing" all the FPAW registrations. And, no, I don't use AI (sorry, not sorry). What I do use is good ol' fashioned MS Excel and manual labor. Yes, it's a bit of a pain in the you-know-what. But, what it does give me is a really good idea of who's planning to attend our meetings, and where the registrants come from.

There are currently 131 registrants for the Fall 2026 FPAW Meeting. That's a pretty good number four weeks out. IMO, we'll end up with somewhere between 175-200 registrants for the meeting.

What's more impressive is that the In Person/Remote split is almost 50/50 right now, instead of the usual 30% In Person and 70% Remote. I attribute it to, as real estate experts are fond to state, "Location, location, location." And, I don't mean MITRE (although I'm plenty proud that my employer is hosting the meeting). Rather, I think it's all about being in the DMV (IYKYK).

And where, your inquiring minds might be wondering, are these 130+ people coming from? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here are the high level highlights.

Thirty (30, OMG!!) people with .gov email addresses (i.e., Feds) are registered, with almost half planning to attend in person (location, location, location). And it's not just the FAA and NOAA employees you'd expect - we have folks with dot.gov, gao.gov, nasa.gov and ntsb.gov email addresses on the list.

Twenty-two (22, holy cow!!) faculty and students from 12 institutions of higher learning (ERAU, OU, LU, OSU, FIT, OTU, UA-A, UGA, UM, UN-L, UND and WMU) have registered, almost half in person (you'll have to figure out the acronyms, several of which have multiple options)!

Eighteen (18, woo-hoo!!) folks who work for FFRDCs (MIT-LL, MITRE, NCAR) are planning to attend, more than half in person.

And then there are the one or two or three folks from the following alphabetically-listed organizations, half of whom are planning to attend in person: A3 Technology, ADB Safegate, ADF, Aeris, AeroWyld, AIAA, Alaska AIrlines, ALPA, Aviation Safety Technologies, AvMet Applications, Baron Weather, Bass Weather Services, BCI, Big Sky Weather Consulting, Campbell Scientific, Cisco, Continuum Dynamics, Delta Air Lines, DroneUp, E2A&B, FedEx, Five-Alpha, Flight Profiler, Garmin, Google, IBSS, Joby Aviation, Nav Canada (glad to see you!), NAWCAD, NEXA Capital Partners, Peraton, Pfizer, Runway 22, SayWeather, Southwest Airlines, Sporty's, STGC, Synoptic Data PBC, The OTUS Project, Tomorrow.io, Turbulent Aerospace, UASafe, United Air Lines, and the Vertical Flight Society.

Now there's a list of organizations interested in aviation weather!

Wouldn't it be nice, perhaps even strategically important, to be there with these folks, mingling at breaks and lunch and following the conclusion of each day's sessions? Shouldn't you be there with us? I certainly think so.

So, there you have it. Register now, preferably in person, here.

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair

Good evening to all of you who, like me, have been bitten by the aviation and/or weather bugs!

I've been doing this stuff (aviation + weather) for more than 50 years, a long, long time. Amazingly, it continues to charge my battery and help scratch the itches from those buggies. I hope the same is true for you, too.

Within the aviation weather ecosystem, the biannual FPAW meetings are key energizers and itch relievers for me. This has become especially true since 2017, when I started to get very deeply involved in planning and executing these types of meetings, first as part of the AMS Aviation, Range and Aerospace Meteorology (ARAM) committee and then FPAW. Eight years later, it's no different - we're now less than five weeks from the Fall 2026 FPAW Meeting, and I've got this feeling of excitement inside me that continues to grow. I can't wait to see the meeting unfold, hear what the excellent presenters and panelists have to say, and meet and greet as many in person attendees as possible!

The benefits of FPAW meeting attendance are clearly there for all participants, regardless of whether they do so remotely or in person. But there is no doubt in my mind that in person participants get a little extra something out of the meeting, whether it's a new or renewed friendship, or an opportunity to dive further into an aviation weather topic with experts while on break or at dinner afterward. And then there's the meeting-specific FPAW activities, some purely social, some very technical, which just can't be duplicated for remote participants. For the upcoming meeting, that activity is a tour of the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center, led by long time aviation weather expert and current FPAW member Mark Huberdeau immediately after the conclusion of the meeting on Thursday, October 29th.

So, for those of you still on the fence about registering, do it now. And if you have the option of attending some or all of the meeting in person, and especially the final day, I encourage you to make every effort to do so. You will benefit by being there in person, and so will we. And you'll get max relief from the itches of those dastardly aviation and weather bugs!

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair

Hello, FPAW Community.

As you know, the FPAW SC decided to add a student member to its rolls effective October 1, 2026 for a one-year term. We had six OUTSTANDING nominees from among whom to choose (see the September 12, 2026 newsletter/emails for the complete list of candidates).

You should take a peek at these six individuals, via your favorite social media platforms (because, being young, they're almost certainly active on one or more of them). They are simply outstanding young men and women, worthy of your future consideration if you are a hiring aviation weather manager.

That said, Nathan and I are beyond thrilled to announce that the following aviation weather student will join the FPAW SC on October 1, 2026 as the CHARTER Student Member (only one person gets to put that on their resume):

• Lauren Burge/University of Oklahoma

Please join me in congratulating Lauren as she assumes this most important and prestigious of roles.

Matt Fronzak and Nathan Polderman
FPAW Co-Chairs