Aviation METARs and TAFs from OCENS
OCENS FlyCast offers global access to aviation METAR observational and TAF forecast data. METAR and/or TAF reports are accessed by sending the four digit International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) airport code(s) of interest via an SMS message to the OCENS weather servers.
If METAR data is requested for one or more airports, only METAR data for those airports is reported. If TAF data is requested for one or more airports, both TAF and METAR data are returned. Coded METAR and/or TAF reports for the subject airport(s) are returned directly to the user within a few minutes of the requests being made. Samples are presented below.
Each message is up to 160 characters in length. If a given TAF or METAR report is longer than 160 characters, the report is split into multiple messages by OCENS and passed to the user. Each message or message segment begins with the phrase TAF or METAR to identify the report type, the pertinent 4-digit airport code, and the date/time stamp for that report. METAR and TAF data are updated at OCENS servers on an hourly basis.
FlyCast on Your Satellite Device
Get FlyCast reports directly to your satellite device or use the OCENS OneMessage app.
Flight-Specific Weather
While METARs and TAFs provide weather information critical to your flight planning, they don’t provide aviation weather conditions away from ICAO airports. They don’t provide insights into what conditions might be at a remote airstrip. Or a landing zone from which hikers, campers, climbers or boaters must be rescued. Or in-route weather conditions that may be changing rapidly.
OCENS flight-specific Flycast forecast fill in the gaps which METAR and TAF reports can’t address. FlyCast’s report 3, 6 and 12 hour forecasts of weather information for any location on earth. Just use the GPS positioning feature of your satellite device and submit that position via your phone’s text messaging service (outbound texts are free on most satellite phones). Within minutes, OCENS FlyCast service returns directly to the face of your satellite phone or its linked smartphone the impending weather for that location. Forecast data returned includes 3, 6 and 12 hour forecasts of:
- Air temperature 2 m above the ground
- Dew Point Temperature
- Visibility
- Low cloud coverage percentage.
- Medium cloud coverage percentage.
- Convective cloud coverage percentage.
- Altimeter pressure
Each message is up to 160 characters long.