1. General Aviation Weather Service in Finland
Klaus Haikarainen / FMI

2. General Aviation in Finland
1418 aircrafts (2009; excl. airliners)
7209 aviation license holders (2009; excl. ATPL)
General aviation flight hours (2008; gliders, motorgliders, ultralights & balloons included)
Operations count low if compared to Central Europe
Operations count low especially during winter because of challenging weather conditions

3. GA weather service organized by Finavia
Finavia Corporation
Finavia provides air navigation services in Finland
Fully state owned company
Turnover ~300 M€ (2009)
~1800 employees (2009)
25 aerodromes

4. Finnish Meteorological Institute FMI
Research and service institute
Over 600 employees, more than half of them in research and development
Turnover 61,7 million euros in 2009
Main research areas
Climate change
Air Quality
Meteorology
Marine Research
Earth Observations
Arctic Research
FMI headquarters in Helsinki

5. FMI as service provider
Aviation and military weather service
4 locations: Helsinki, Tampere, Kuopio and Rovaniemi
Integrated production of civil & military aviation weather service – cost effective
Quality management system and ISO-9001 certificate
GA weather service given by phone from Helsinki
Media: telephone, fax, internet, text-TV
Financing of civil aviation weather service
Finavia buys service & development from FMI at cost price
No direct financing from state budget or whatsoever

6. GA Weather products GAFOR (BBBB=) TAF, METAR
SWC Scandinavia (00, 06, 12 and 18 UTC)
Upper air charts
Web & mobile products
gliding forecast made as volunteer work - WRF model initialized by GFS data
Metars, Tafs & Gafors available via text-TV

7. Visibility and cloud height criteria
GAFOR in Finland
Visibility and cloud height criteria
Cloud height O D M X
1500ft
1000ft
500ft
1500m
5000m
8000m
Visibility

8. GAFOR in Finland
GAFOR issued at 03 and 12 UTC and also UTC for areas 30/39 (northern Finland)
Validity 9hrs
Forecast areas based on geographical / meteorological characteristics

9. An example of Finnish GAFOR
FBFI41 EFLK AAA GA-FCST FOR AREAS 11/17 VALID 0412
WX LÄNTISILLÄ JA LOUNAISILLA MERI-ALUEILLA JA LÄNSIRANNIKOLLA SATAA VÄHÄN LUNTA. PÄIVÄLLÄ VÄHÄISIÄ LUMIKUUROJA VOI TULLA PAIKOIN MUUALLAKIN.
WINDS 11/17
SFC /05-10KT
2000FT /10-20KT
5000FT /10-20KT
0-C LEVEL 11/17 NIL
ICE LCA MOD INC BLW FL100
TURB NIL
GAFOR EFHK 0412 BBBB 11,12,14 O BECMG 0609 M -SN 13,15 O LCA TEMPO 0912 M -SN 16,17 D ST BECMG 0810 O LCA TEMPO 1012 M -SN=

10. Future development Graphical GAFOR – or similar LLF AutoTAF?
Semiautomatic Low-Level SWC produced on a meteorological workstation? Output also in some LLF format?
Pilots would like to have more & better products, but unfortunately nothing is free 