Mhm… via Bahamas. Originating Columbia… one kilo of what? 
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I’ll be careful when I get back to the US. My world tour has me on the way to Bogota right now.
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No. In the USA, which is where I presume OP was talking about, the ATIS is updated every hour around 50 minutes after the hour, unless there is a modification required due to rapidly changing conditions.
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Do you know at which airports in the U.S. is 30min standard? That’s what I’ve found;
U.S. ATIS since 1964:
ATIS is usually updated once an hour; 30 minutes at some airports. If the weather or airport conditions change significantly before the next version is due, a new message is recorded immediately with the word “special” added after the zulu time.
I read that too, and I’ve yet to hear of any airports where 30 mins is the norm. Maybe at certain larger airports & airports where conditions are known to change quickly?
Unless it starts to rain again, of course.
They can be pretty casual about what level of change is necessary to record a new ATIS message. Yesterday ATIS at KPWK gave a “Low Level Wind Shear Alert”, and when I landed a half-hour later the wind was calm. Recording an ATIS message at most towers is a labor-intensive activity (someone usually has to leave a station to do it), so you won’t hear new ones unless something dramatic happens with the weather.
I believe you may be referring to AWOS, which is automated and usually updates more often, like every 20 minutes or so. ATIS is recorded by a “human” just before the hour, with special observations if something significant changes (like the field going IFR).
In any case, the point is to check when approaching an airport you left from, if the info is still the same.
New airport you let the controller know you have the correct info. It essentially takes the workload of the controller.
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No, I did mean ATIS. In Europe 30min is standard.
@Valkenswaard, and you can hear in ATCs voice quite often the anger or joy if he can lecture you that you have an ATIS which is outdated since a few minutes.
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Well, I was trying to pick up the same humour as in the line
“Once they get to Zulu, no one can land there for the next 24 hours.”
to which I replied with “unless it starts to rain again”. Maybe the humour was lost in my line 
In any case, I wasn’t trying to seriously explain “how ATIS works”. In fact, I had no clue, until this thread here enlightened me somewhat (until now I always wondered where the bottles where in the airplane when I heard “… with Whisky to land” ;))
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Thank you for your answer but perhaps you could clarify it for me.
Please bear in mind that I bought my first flight sim last year, FSX Steam, I haven’t flown an Aircraft since I got out of an RAF Chipmunk aged 14. Now, much like then, I leave the comms to the other pilot.
My question was perhaps unclear, what I meant was, where does the AI pilot get “mike” to land? In the game. For me, and maybe a few others, that answer you quoted might as well be in Latin, it only helps if you know what you’re talking about, I don’t but I’m trying to learn.
If you don’t listen to the ATIS frequency, the first contact with ATC in the sim assumes you have. Otherwise, if you want to hear the ATIS message, tune to that frequency before you contact tower (or the appropriate entry point into ATC).
Thank you, I did wonder what the second comms tab was for, I just left it all to the AI. That leaves me free to concentrate on not burying myself in the countryside, or stuffing my undercarriage through the wings 
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