D-ATIS Monitor - Help
How to use the D-ATIS Monitor and Compact View.
Data source & refresh rate
ATIS data is sourced from the FAA SWIM (System Wide Information Management) feed and proxied through this server. The monitor refreshes automatically every 60 seconds. The refresh countdown is visible in the status bar and in the Compact View header.
Adding airports to the monitor
Enter an airport code in the input field at the top and use one of the following actions:
- Add to Monitor
- Permanently adds the airport to your watch list. The airport will persist across page reloads and is shared between the main view and Compact View.
- Quick Look
- Fetches the current ATIS for the airport and shows it in a modal without adding it to your monitor. Useful for a one-off check.
Both ICAO codes (4-letter, e.g. KJFK) and IATA codes (3-letter, e.g. JFK) are accepted. Non-CONUS airports such as Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and USVI are mapped to their correct ICAO prefix (e.g. HNL PHNL).
Airline presets let you load a curated set of hub airports for major US carriers in one click. Select a carrier from the dropdown to replace your current list with that airline's primary hubs.
Active Runways - enable the Active Runways toggle (in the airport toolbar, to the right of Clear All) to display active runway badges below each ATIS row. Runway information is parsed from the ATIS text and shown as color-coded badges grouped by arrival and departure runways. When the toggle is on and an ATIS exists but no runway information can be extracted, a "Runway info not detected" notice appears in place of the badges. Runway display also applies in the Compact View.
Individual airports can be removed by clicking the on their chip in the airport list. Reset Defaults restores the default hub set. Clear All removes every airport from the monitor.
Main view - airport cards
Each monitored airport is displayed as a card. Here is an annotated example:
- Drag handle
- Drag the card to reorder your monitor. The new order is saved automatically.
- ICAO identifier
- The airport's 4-letter ICAO code, color-coded to match the current flight category (see below).
- Observation time
- The UTC time of the most recent ATIS observation, shown in muted monospace to the left of the flight category badge in the card header. Sourced from the combined ATIS when available, falling back to the arrival then departure ATIS.
- AAR 44 Airport Arrival Rate badge
- When an Airport Arrival Rate is published for the airport on the FAA OIS (Operational Information System), an AAR badge showing the current rate (arrivals per hour) appears between the observation time and the flight-category badge. Click it to open the airport's OIS arrival-rate page in a popup window. The badge is hidden for airports with no published rate. It also appears in the full-ATIS modal header.
- Flight category badge IFR
- Derived from the visibility and ceiling values in the ATIS text. Shown in the upper-right corner of each card.
- ARR / DEP / INFO
- ATIS type. Airports with split arrival/departure ATIS show separate ARR and DEP rows. Airports with a single combined broadcast show INFO.
- Letter (e.g. W)
- The current ATIS identifier letter. Advances alphabetically each time ATC issues a new ATIS.
- Time (e.g. 1530Z)
- The time the current ATIS was issued, in UTC (Zulu).
Click anywhere on a card (except the drag handle) to open a modal showing the full ATIS text for that airport.
Flight category colors
Flight category is calculated from the visibility and ceiling reported in the ATIS text using standard FAA definitions:
| Category | Ceiling | Visibility | Color |
|---|---|---|---|
| VFR | > 3,000 ft | > 5 SM | Green |
| MVFR | 1,000 – 3,000 ft | 3 – 5 SM | Blue |
| IFR | 500 – 999 ft | 1 – 2¾ SM | Red |
| LIFR | < 500 ft | < 1 SM | Purple |
The flight category uses the worse of ceiling or visibility. The ICAO identifier on each card and each row in the Compact View is also tinted to match the category for quick at-a-glance status.
Update alerts & stale indicators
When the ATIS letter changes between refreshes, the affected row lights up with an amber glow:
The update state persists until you explicitly dismiss it. You can clear it in three ways:
- Click the amber badge to open the detail panel - opening the ATIS marks it as read.
- Click the dismiss button that appears on the right side of the updated row.
- Click Mark All Read in the status bar (or header in Compact View) to clear all updates at once.
Stale ATIS - if an ATIS has not been updated in more than 1 hour, its badge and time are dimmed to indicate the data may be outdated:
Stale state is based on the issue time embedded in the ATIS, not on the last FAA fetch. A stale badge does not necessarily mean there is a problem - some airports simply update their ATIS less frequently.
Compact View
The Compact View is a condensed, dark-themed window designed to sit alongside other applications on your desktop. Open it from the status bar by clicking Compact View.
It opens as a separate popup window (approximately 550 × 720 px) so you can keep it visible while working in other tools. The window can be resized and repositioned freely.
Key differences from the main view:
- Dark theme - lower visual weight for secondary-monitor or side-panel use.
- Dense list layout - all airports in a single scrollable column, one row each.
- Inline detail panels - click an ATIS type badge to expand the full ATIS text directly below the row (no separate modal).
- Live Zulu clock - ticks every second in the header.
- Shared airport list - the Compact View reads and watches the same localStorage key as the main page. Adding or removing an airport on the main page is reflected immediately in the Compact View.
- Alerts on update - a browser notification fires and the tab title gains a
(!)prefix when an ATIS letter changes. Clicking the notification brings the window to the front - see Browser notifications. - Settings panel - a gear button in the header opens a settings popup with a Text Size control, the Highlight Changes toggle, and a Monitored Airports section for adding or removing airports without leaving the Compact View (the same list as the main page).
- FAA Data Health footer - a fixed footer at the bottom shows status dots for the SWIM Feed (ATIS data) and FAA OIS (arrival-rate data) sources, plus the time of the last successful fetch.
Compact View - UI elements
- Live dot
- Pulses green to confirm the monitor is active.
- HHMM/SS Zulu clock
- Live UTC clock in HHMM/SS format. Ticks every second.
- Refresh countdown
- The button label shows the seconds remaining until the next automatic refresh. Click it to refresh immediately.
- Settings button
- Opens a popup containing three controls:
- Text Size — an A− / A+ control that steps the list text through five scale levels; the choice is saved in your browser.
- Highlight Changes toggle — see ATIS history & change highlighting for details.
- Monitored Airports — add or remove airports without leaving the Compact View; uses the same airport list as the main page.
- Help button
- Opens the D-ATIS Monitor help page in a new window.
- ICAO identifier (color-coded)
- Color matches the current flight category: green = VFR, blue = MVFR, red = IFR, purple = LIFR.
- ARR W / DEP V / INFO S ATIS type badges
-
Shows the ATIS type and current identifier letter. Badge color indicates type:
- Blue - Arrival ATIS (ARR)
- Green - Departure ATIS (DEP)
- Indigo - Combined broadcast (INFO)
- Amber glow - ATIS letter has changed since last read
- Dimmed - ATIS is more than 1 hour old (stale)
|separator (e.g. ARR W | DEP V); clicking either half expands both ATIS texts inline. Airports with one combined broadcast show a single INFO badge. Click again (or the in the expanded panel) to close it. Opening a badge marks that ATIS as read. - Flight category badge
- Same VFR / MVFR / IFR / LIFR label as the main view, shown as a small badge to the right of the ATIS badges.
- Issue time
- UTC time the current ATIS was issued, shown at the far right of each row in muted text.
- Dismiss button
- Appears on a row only when at least one of its ATIS badges is showing an amber update alert. Click it to mark that airport's updates as read without opening the detail panel.
- Mark All Read
- Appears in the header when any airport has unread updates. Clears all amber alerts at once.
- FAA Data Health footer
- A fixed bar at the bottom of the Compact View. Shows status dots for the SWIM Feed (ATIS text) and FAA OIS (arrival-rate data) sources — green = OK, amber = fetching, red = error — and displays the last successful fetch time on the right (e.g. Updated 1542Z).
ATIS history & change highlighting
The monitor fetches the recent ATIS history for each airport and can highlight words that are new in the current ATIS compared to the previous one, making it easy to spot what changed without reading the full text.
Main view (modal)
When you click a card to open the detail modal and a previous ATIS is available, two tabs appear at the top of the modal body:
- Previous (HHMMZ) - the prior ATIS text, shown as plain text.
- Current (HHMMZ) - the latest ATIS text, with optional change highlighting.
The Highlight Changes toggle in the airport toolbar controls whether words that appear in the current ATIS but not in the previous one are marked with a yellow highlight on the Current tab. Only additions are shown — removed words are omitted rather than struck through, so the current text reads naturally.
A full history button to the left of the tab row opens a dropdown listing every ATIS entry from the past 24 hours, each with its letter and published time. Selecting an entry opens a dedicated History tab showing that entry's full text; the Previous tab continues to show the immediately preceding ATIS unchanged.
Compact View
When you expand an ATIS type badge in the Compact View, change highlighting works the same way — new words are marked in yellow if the toggle is on. No previous ATIS text is shown separately; only the current text is displayed.
To enable highlighting in the Compact View, click the Settings button in the header and check Highlight Changes.
A spinner appears briefly next to the issue time while history is being fetched. Once loaded, the panel re-renders automatically with highlighting applied.
Browser notifications
The Compact View can send an OS-level browser notification whenever an ATIS letter changes on a background refresh - useful when the window is behind other applications or minimised.
Enabling notifications
Click the bell button in the Compact View header to trigger the browser permission prompt. Once granted, the bell disappears and notifications are active for that browser and domain.
If you previously denied permission, the bell changes to a bell-slash in red. To re-enable, open your browser's site settings for this page and set Notifications to Allow, then reload the Compact View.
What the notification shows
When ATIS letters change the notification title reads D-ATIS Monitor. The body lists the airports with updated letters:
ATIS update: KATL, KJFK
Clicking the notification brings the Compact View window to the front and dismisses the notification. Notifications auto-dismiss after 60 seconds if not clicked. If multiple refreshes detect changes before you acknowledge, the previous notification is replaced rather than stacked.
Tab title alert
As a fallback that requires no permissions, the browser tab and taskbar title gains a (!) prefix (e.g. (!) D-ATIS Monitor - Dispatch Tools) whenever letter changes are detected. The prefix clears when you click into the Compact View window or click Mark All Read.