Generally, QICP is only significant to Part 135/121 operators. Volume 3, chapter 7, section 3, paragraph 1441 of the Air Transportation Operations Inspector's Handbook, Order 8900.1 states that if a part 121 or 135 operator obtains aviation weather or notices to airmen (NOTAM) data via the Internet, that operator must use an approved FAA Qualified Internet Communication Provider (QICP).

As other posters have noted, an individual 135/121 operator must list (and obtain approval for) specific sources of weather information via OpSpec A010. For instance, our operation is approved to use FLTPLAN.COM and WSI as QICPs.

If you're interested to know what's so special about QICP certification - it's simply focused on network infrastructure reliability, accessibility, and security - not the quality of the data. Among other things:

1. No outage can last longer than 10 minutes.
2. During any continuous 3-month period outages cannot total more than 30 minutes.
3. Security provides Internet SSL site authentication and maintains data integrity.
4. Accessibility and transaction times are less than 2 minutes.

In addition, QICP Certified web sites must be able to verify users' access to the web site via systems log files.




To answer the OP's question - for Part 91 operations, getting your data from a QICP has the same force and effect as obtaining your data from Flight Service or DUATS, because your user access is logged and can be verified.