Definition
A government-provided online weather service that delivers official aviation weather products to pilots, dispatchers, and flight planners. ADDS provides text and graphical weather information including current conditions, forecasts, winds aloft, icing, turbulence, and convective weather, drawn from the same data the National Weather Service uses to support aviation. ADDS has been integrated into the Aviation Weather Center website, where its products remain available for flight planning use.
Plain English
An official government website where pilots get the weather they need to plan a flight. It shows what the weather is doing now, what it is expected to do, and where the rough or icy air is — all in one place, in forms designed for aviation.
Context Anchor
Seen in FAA weather-source discussions, especially older references to online preflight weather information.
Derivation
The name describes the service plainly: 'Aviation' (for flying), 'Digital' (computer-delivered rather than paper or voice), and 'Data Services' (a collection of weather products). It was named to distinguish it from the older phone-briefing and printed-chart era of weather access.
Why Pilots Care
Gives pilots fast, reliable access to weather information needed to decide whether a flight can be conducted safely and to plan routes around hazardous conditions.
Intuition Check
Do not read ADDS as a clearance or approval to fly. It was a source of weather information, not permission from air traffic control or a guarantee that conditions were safe.
Example Sentence 1
Before departure, the pilot pulled up ADDS to review winds aloft and check for any icing along the route.
Example Sentence 2
Graphical products on ADDS showed the location of icing and turbulence along the planned route.