ATIS Decoder
Simulated ATIS broadcasts built from an airport's live METAR - U.S. airports in the FAA format, airports elsewhere in the world in the ICAO format (no legitimate live ATIS source is available) - training broadcasts and your own text, decoded item by item: identification, letter, time, wind, visibility, ceiling, altimeter or QNH, runways, approach, transition level and operational information, with copying practice.
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Pick one of the twenty quick-pick U.S. airports, or search any other airport — a U.S. airport that has an instrument approach and a METAR station, or an airport anywhere else in the world that has a METAR station and a paved runway — by its ICAO or IATA code, name or city, and press Build ATIS: the page fetches the airport's latest METAR (NOAA / National Weather Service Aviation Weather Center, through this site's server) and turns it into a SIMULATED broadcast. U.S. airports are broadcast in the FAA format: airport and information letter, time of the weather, wind (magnetic), visibility, weather, sky and ceiling, temperature and dew point, altimeter in inches, the lightning and cloud remarks, the approach and runways in use, and "advise on initial contact you have information …". All other airports are broadcast in the ICAO format: aerodrome and information letter, time of observation, approach type expected, runway in use, transition level, surface wind (magnetic), visibility in metres or CAVOK and RVR, present weather, cloud in feet, temperature and dew point, QNH in hectopascals, wind shear or recent weather, the trend of the METAR (NOSIG, BECMG, TEMPO), and "acknowledge receipt of information … and advise aircraft type on first contact". The page states which format applies to the airport you chose. The weather is real and current; the letter, the runways and the approach are this simulator's choice from training data (the source is named on the page) — it is never the airport's own broadcast, and the page says so on the drawing and in the readout.
Training broadcasts are the example broadcasts printed in the Aeronautical Information Manual and in the controllers' order JO 7110.65, and constructed broadcasts at fictional airports with the operational items an ATIS carries: runway condition codes, a shortened runway, closures, birds, a microburst advisory, a laser event. Paste lets you decode a broadcast you copied yourself, in words or in printed form with contractions; it is labelled PASTED and not verified.
The readout lists every item an ATIS contains, where in the broadcast it was found and the paragraph it comes from; an item that is not stated says so (no sky or visibility means a ceiling of 5,000 ft or more and visibility of 5 miles or more). Play reads the broadcast with your browser's synthetic voice; hide the text to copy it by ear. Type your initial call to check that it reports the current code word, and use Practice for scored questions — letter, wind, altimeter, runway, what to say on initial contact, the next letter, and what to do when the controller says a new letter is current.
Assumption and limits: educational use only — never use a simulated broadcast for flight; listen to the airport's own ATIS or D-ATIS. No legitimate public source of ATIS text or audio is available to this site (the FAA's digital ATIS reaches the public only through a subscription data service, and recordings by third parties are not offered for rebroadcast), so every broadcast here is simulated or pasted. The runway, approach and letter of a simulated broadcast follow stated model rules — the runway direction with the most headwind (for U.S. airports in instrument conditions one with an instrument approach and at most 10 kt of tailwind), visual approaches when the U.S. METAR is VFR, otherwise an ILS before an RNAV approach before others, and a letter that advances with the hour of the observation — a real facility decides its own. For airports outside the United States no approach data exists: the broadcast says "expect visual approach" only when the METAR reports CAVOK and otherwise "expect instrument approach", without naming an ILS or any procedure, and it names the landing runway as the longest runway of the direction with the most headwind and, for parallel runways, a different take-off runway. The transition level of an ICAO-format broadcast is a simplified estimate (the lowest flight level, in steps of 5, that is 1,000 ft above the transition altitude once the QNH is applied) computed from the transition altitude of the table where a published value is known (Canada, Japan and Korea: the lowest usable flight level) and otherwise from an assumed transition altitude of 10,000 ft (simplified, not from the AIP), which the readout states next to the level; only a METAR without a QNH leaves the level to ATC. Runway surface conditions, braking action, holding delay and other operational information are not modelled. No NOTAMs are added to a simulated live broadcast. Runway data: FAA CIFP and d-TPP training data of the cycle named on the page for U.S. airports; OurAirports runways with the magnetic variation of the NOAA World Magnetic Model for all others — not current after the dates on the page. Only the runways listed in those data are modelled, and the simulated broadcast is not the airport's actual ATIS.
Content and order follow AIM 4-1-13 (Automatic Terminal Information Service) and FAA Order JO 7110.65BB 2-9-1 to 2-9-3 (letter at the beginning and the end, letters in sequence from Alfa to Zulu regardless of a new day, a new recording with every new official weather, the items of a broadcast and their order, the lightning, cumulonimbus and towering cumulus remarks, approaches in use with precision approaches advertised before approaches with vertical guidance and before non-precision ones, departure runways only when different, the hold-short read-back statement and the acknowledgement instruction). The spoken forms are those of JO 7110.10EE 2-4-1 (wind, visibility, runway visual range, weather, ceiling and sky, temperature, altimeter) and 2-4-3 (remarks), JO 7110.65BB 2-4-17 (numbers, time, runways) and the AIM 4-2-7 to 4-2-12 (phonetic alphabet, figures, altitudes, directions); every example printed there is reproduced word for word on this page. ATIS winds are magnetic (AIM 7-1-10; Aviation Weather Handbook FAA-H-8083-28B, Table 3-5); the METAR's true wind is converted with the airport's magnetic variation from the FAA CIFP. ICAO-format broadcasts follow the content and order of SERA.9010 (the European and UK text that carries ICAO Annex 11 into law): aerodrome, information designator, time of observation, type of approach expected, runway in use, transition level, surface wind in degrees magnetic, visibility and RVR, present weather, cloud, temperature, dew point, altimeter setting, significant phenomena and recent weather, trend forecast, and the closing instruction; the pilot acknowledges receipt of the ATIS on first contact (SERA.9010(a)(2)). Numbers are read digit by digit, visibility in metres below 5 km and in kilometres above, cloud heights in feet as the METAR codes them, and the METAR's true wind is converted to magnetic with the aerodrome's variation.
Decoding reads the spoken words back into values (letters, times, headings, altitudes, runways) and printed broadcast text in METAR groups with the contractions of FAA Order JO 7340.2P; DEPG and ADVS, met in printed text, are not FAA contractions and are flagged when they appear. A sentence that is no known item is kept as an operational item, as written. Initial contact: AIM 4-1-13 and 4-2-3 (report the code word received), JO 7110.65 2-9-2 ("Verify you have information …", "Information … current"); "have numbers" never means the ATIS was received (AIM 4-1-13).
Runways and approach names: for U.S. airports, the FAA Coded Instrument Flight Procedures and the digital Terminal Procedures Publication of the cycle named on the page for every airport that has an instrument approach procedure and a METAR station (the twenty quick picks are built into the page; the others are loaded only when you search for one or open it by ?id=), checked against the rule that a runway number is the whole number nearest one-tenth of its magnetic azimuth (AIM 2-3-3). For all other airports, the runways (designators, length, true heading) of OurAirports, which is in the public domain, for every airport with a METAR station on the Aviation Weather Center list and at least one paved runway; the magnetic bearing of each runway end is its true heading minus the magnetic declination of the NOAA World Magnetic Model WMM2025 at the airport on the date named on the page, and the result is compared with the runway number by the same rule (a difference of one number comes from the slow drift of the magnetic field since the runway was numbered; a larger difference is flagged and the number is used instead). Live weather: the Aviation Weather Center Data API (aviationweather.gov) through this site's server, the same live METAR as the METAR Decoder, labelled live or cached copy with its observation and retrieval times. The synthetic voice is the browser's speech synthesis; nothing is recorded or sent anywhere.
- Aeronautical Information Manual (effective 9 July 2026) 4-1-13 (Automatic Terminal Information Service: content, sky and visibility omitted above 5,000 and 5, initial contact, "have numbers"), 4-2-3 (contact procedures), 4-2-7 to 4-2-12 (phonetic alphabet, figures, altitudes, directions, speeds, time), 7-1-10 NOTE (ATIS wind is magnetic), 2-3-3 (runway designators)
- FAA Order JO 7110.65BB, Air Traffic Control (effective 9 July 2026) 2-9-1 (letter at both ends, Alfa to Zulu in sequence), 2-9-2 (a new recording with every new official weather; "Verify you have information", "Information current"), 2-9-3 (content, order and the example broadcast), 2-4-16 and 2-4-17 (phonetics, numbers usage), 2-6-3 (calm wind)
- FAA Order JO 7110.10EE, Flight Services (effective 9 July 2026) 2-4-1 (spoken surface observations: wind, visibility, runway visual range, weather, ceiling and sky, temperature and dew point, altimeter) and 2-4-3 (remarks)
- FAA Order JO 7340.2P, Contractions (effective 9 July 2026), chapter 2 (the contractions of printed broadcast text)
- FAA-H-8083-28B Aviation Weather Handbook (2026) Table 3-5 (wind in ATIS relative to magnetic north) and 24.4 (METAR)
- FAA Coded Instrument Flight Procedures and digital Terminal Procedures Publication (public domain; the cycle is named on the page and in docs/references/atis-data-sources.json): runways, magnetic variation and instrument approach chart names of every U.S. airport that has an instrument approach and a METAR station (training data, not current after the cycle)
- NOAA / National Weather Service Aviation Weather Center station list (aviationweather.gov/data/cache/stations.cache.json.gz, the cache file of the Data API): which identifiers report METAR, and their IATA codes; public domain
- NOAA / National Weather Service Aviation Weather Center Data API (aviationweather.gov/data/api, read 2026-10-16): the current METAR behind a simulated broadcast; NWS information is in the public domain (weather.gov disclaimer)
- SERA.9010 Automatic terminal information service (ATIS), UK CAA regulatory library, retrieved 2026-10-24 (the content and order of an ICAO-format ATIS - aerodrome, designator, time, approach, runway, transition level, wind in degrees magnetic, visibility and RVR, weather, cloud, temperature, dew point, altimeter, phenomena, trend, instructions - and the acknowledgement on first contact; it carries ICAO Annex 11 into law in the EU and UK)
- OurAirports (ourairports.com/data; "All data is released to the Public Domain"): the runways (designators, lengths, true headings, surfaces) and the names of the airports outside the FAA data; it holds no approach or ILS data
- NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information / British Geological Survey, World Magnetic Model WMM2025 (public domain; epoch 2025.0, valid to 2030.0; DOI 10.25921/aqfd-sd83): the magnetic declination at each airport on the date named on the page, which turns true runway headings into magnetic bearings and the METAR's true wind into the magnetic wind of an ATIS
- Transition altitudes (a hand-kept table with its sources, tools/data/world/transition-altitudes.json) and the simplified transition level (the lowest flight level, in steps of 5, that is 1,000 ft above the transition altitude with the QNH applied; UK CAA: "the lowest flight level giving at least 1,000 ft separation above the transition altitude"; Canada, Japan and Korea: the lowest usable flight level, TC AIM RAC 6.4.3); aerodromes without an entry use an assumed transition altitude of 10,000 ft (owner decision, simplified, not from the AIP), stated in the readout
- Model choices of this tool (stated on the page): every broadcast is simulated or pasted (no legitimate public ATIS source is available to the site); the runway direction with the most headwind (in instrument conditions one with an instrument approach and at most 10 kt of tailwind), visual approaches when the METAR is VFR, an ILS before an RNAV approach before others, a letter that advances with the hour of the observation; outside the U.S. "expect visual approach" only with CAVOK, otherwise "expect instrument approach", the longest runway of the most-headwind direction, a different take-off runway for parallels, a simplified transition level from the table's transition altitude or, without an entry, an assumed 10,000 ft; practice questions and scoring; constructed broadcasts at fictional airports