PIREP Decoder
Live pilot reports around an airport from the NOAA Aviation Weather Center, or your own PIREP text, decoded group by group into plain words — UA or UUA, location, time, altitude, aircraft, sky, weather, temperature, wind, turbulence, icing and remarks — with the AIM intensity and type tables.
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Enter an airport identifier (for example KDEN or KJFK) and press Get PIREPs: the pilot reports within 100 NM of it from the last three hours come from the NOAA / National Weather Service Aviation Weather Center through this site's server, newest first. Pick a report to decode it. The readout header always says what you are looking at — LIVE, a CACHED COPY (an older stored list, when the Aviation Weather Center could not be reached), PASTED (your own text; several reports, one per line) or SIMULATED (a training example). The filter keeps the urgent reports, or the ones with turbulence, icing or wind shear. Many airports have no report in three hours; that only means nobody flew and reported there.
A PIREP is the station, UA (routine) or UUA (urgent), then groups that each start with a slash and a code: /OV where, /TM when (UTC), /FL the altitude (hundreds of feet MSL), /TP the aircraft type, and one or more of /SK sky, /WX flight visibility and weather, /TA temperature, /WV wind, /TB turbulence, /IC icing, /RM remarks. The list under the report gives each group in plain words with the paragraph it comes from; the tables below list the elements, the turbulence and icing intensities with the AIM's descriptions of what the aircraft and the cabin feel, the durations and the types. The drawing puts the layers on an altitude scale, coloured by intensity (green none, cyan light, amber moderate, coral severe or extreme).
Mind the references: the /OV location is where the phenomenon was met, not where the aircraft was when it reported. The wind of a PIREP is MAGNETIC (an AIREP's is true), and the altitudes are above mean sea level, unlike the heights of a METAR. A group the FAA tables do not define — and real reports carry many, for example "/OV 25W", "LT CHOP" or "/WV STRONG" — is shown as written; the few common forms of the Aviation Weather Center data that are clear (a distance and a compass point, LT, SMOOTH) are read and marked as not in the FAA tables, and anything else is marked NOT DECODED. Pasted text that is not a PIREP at all gets warnings and is shown as written.
Assumption and limits: educational use only — not for flight planning; before flight use an official weather briefing. A PIREP is one pilot's report at one place and time; the absence of a report is not a report of smooth air, and the intensity is the pilot's judgement (severe icing, for example, depends on the aircraft). This site keeps a copy of each list for 90 seconds to stay within the provider's limits; if the Aviation Weather Center cannot be reached, a stored copy up to two hours old is shown and labelled, and when there is none you see the error and no report. The drawing is schematic: layers are drawn as reported, with the altitude of the /FL group where a layer gives none.
The format is the one of the Aeronautical Information Manual (effective 9 July 2026), 7-1-18 Pilot Weather Reports (PIREPs): the element code chart TBL 7-1-18 (items 1 to 6 are in every transmitted PIREP with one or more of items 7 to 13) and its two examples; 7-1-19 (icing: trace, light, moderate and severe with their representative accretion rates, and the note that severe icing is aircraft dependent); 7-1-20 (the definitions of rime, clear or glaze and mixed ice); 7-1-21 with TBL 7-1-21, the Turbulence Reporting Criteria Table (light, moderate, severe and extreme turbulence, light and moderate chop, occasional less than 1/3 of the time, intermittent 1/3 to 2/3, continuous more than 2/3; high-level turbulence not associated with cumuliform cloud is CAT); 7-1-22 (wind shear PIREPs).
The coding follows the FAA Aviation Weather Handbook FAA-H-8083-28B (2026), section 24.5: 24.5.1.1 the message type (UUA covers tornadoes, funnel clouds and waterspouts, severe or extreme turbulence, severe icing, hail, low-level wind shear within 2,000 ft of the surface, volcanic ash and anything hazardous), 24.5.1.2 the location (a fix, a fix with a radial and a distance in NM, or a route of fixes), 24.5.1.3 the time, 24.5.1.4 the altitude, 24.5.1.5 the aircraft type, 24.5.1.6 the sky condition (cover, base and TOP in hundreds of feet MSL, UNKN, layers separated by a slash), 24.5.1.7 the flight visibility (FV and two digits, SM) and weather (the codes of the surface report, Table 24-3), 24.5.1.8 the temperature (M for minus), 24.5.1.9 the wind (magnetic, KT), 24.5.1.10 turbulence (duration, intensity, type, altitude), 24.5.1.11 icing (intensity, RIME, CLR or MX, altitude), 24.5.1.12 the remarks (LLWS, funnel cloud, thunderstorms, lightning, DURC, DURD, the SKYSPOTTER and dispatcher suffixes). AIREPs (24.5.2: ARP routine and ARS special, position, time, flight level, temperature, wind referenced to true north, turbulence) are decoded in the same way. Every example of the handbook is reproduced by the tests.
Not decoded, on purpose: the forms that neither source defines are not guessed — the page shows them as written. Aircraft types are shown with a name only for a short list of type designators (the three of the handbook's examples, BE20, SR22 and P28R, and a few common ones for orientation); the others are shown as written.
Live data: the Aviation Weather Center Data API (aviationweather.gov/data/api, read 23 October 2026), read through this site's server, which asks for one airport with a fixed radius (100 NM) and age (3 hours), keeps a short copy (90 seconds), passes on only a short list of fields and limits requests per visitor and for the whole site well below the provider's 100 requests a minute. An airport the Aviation Weather Center does not know is reported as such. Aviation Weather Center data is public domain; this site is not affiliated with or endorsed by NOAA or the NWS.
- Aeronautical Information Manual (effective 9 July 2026) 7-1-18 (Pilot Weather Reports with TBL 7-1-18, the PIREP element code chart, and two examples), 7-1-19 (PIREPs relating to airframe icing: trace, light, moderate and severe with their accretion rates), 7-1-20 (definitions of inflight icing terms: rime, clear or glaze, and mixed ice), 7-1-21 (PIREPs relating to turbulence with TBL 7-1-21, the Turbulence Reporting Criteria Table: intensity, chop, duration), 7-1-22 (wind shear PIREPs)
- FAA-H-8083-28B Aviation Weather Handbook (2026), 24.5 Aircraft Observations and Reports: 24.5.1 (PIREP coding: 24.5.1.1 UA and UUA, 24.5.1.2 location /OV, 24.5.1.3 time /TM, 24.5.1.4 altitude /FL, 24.5.1.5 aircraft type /TP, 24.5.1.6 sky condition /SK, 24.5.1.7 flight visibility and weather /WX with Table 24-3, 24.5.1.8 temperature /TA, 24.5.1.9 wind /WV, 24.5.1.10 turbulence /TB, 24.5.1.11 icing /IC, 24.5.1.12 remarks /RM) and 24.5.2 (AIREPs, ARP and ARS)
- NOAA / National Weather Service Aviation Weather Center Data API (aviationweather.gov/data/api, read 23 October 2026): pilot reports within a radial distance of an airport, up to 3 hours back; 100 requests per minute, a custom user agent requested, no cross-origin access; NWS information is in the public domain (weather.gov disclaimer)
- Model choices of this tool (stated on the page): the forms of the AWC data that the FAA tables do not define (a distance and compass point in /OV, LT, SMOOTH, WAVE, a bare DURC in /FL) are read as stated and marked, the colours and the altitude drawing, the training examples (the FAA publications' own and constructed ones), the names of the short list of aircraft type designators (the handbook's three examples BE20, SR22 and P28R as it names them; the others are common names shown for orientation)