Radar becomes an additional subscription service from the 1st May 2003   - (see Our Services link).

As many of you will know we have been wrestling with delivering the right radar service for those Members that want radar data. It has, so far, been impossible to suit the three groups of Members with a single solution,

The three groups of Members are;

1) Those pilots who do not regard radar data as a valuable part of their subscription - the majority of our Members.
2) Those pilots who do use radar data to help them plan their flight.
3) Those Members whose interest in radar data is meteorological rather than aviation.
Group # 2 are currently enjoying a 30-minute radar service that costs AvBrief £11,626 a year.
Group # 3 really want a 15-minute service that would cost us over £19,000 a year

Our conclusion is that 30-minute radar is only servicing a small section of our Members and even this section would find flight planning more effective with access to 15-minute radar data.

We have therefore concluded that the fairest way of offering the best service is to provide an improved 15-minute radar service but to ask those who want this data to pay an additional premium.

This allows us to maintain our aviation services for private users without any price increase and we have no plans to increase our prices for aviation services in the short-term.

Members will enjoy an unchanged set of services while their current subscription remains in force.

Upon renewing, the extra cost of 15-minute radar will be only £19.74 if taken out at the same time as the aviation services renewal. That's a total of £59.22 for weather, airfield information, Notams and 15-minute radar for a full year; the equivalent of £1.14 a week and the lowest priced combined briefing service on the UK market.

The range of aviation services will continue to expand and imminently we will be switching to a real-time global Notam feed using the NATS Broadcast interface. An improved integrated narrow route brief is on track for release in the early part of the Summer. Also in July we will be announcing a major flight planning development.