History and useĭespite its common name, the alphabet doesn't seem to appear in any official North Atlantic Treaty Organization publication. The ITU numbers are quite different from all other versions (and no stress is given). ANSI gives English spellings, but does not give pronunciations or numbers. These are from the FAA Flight Services manual (§ 14.1.5) and the ATC manual (§ 2-4-16). The FAA gives different spellings for their pronunciations depending on the publication consulted. The ICAO and ITU, but not the FAA, give an alternate pronunciation for a couple of letter-words. Wherever the agencies (ICAO, ITU, FAA, ANSI) differ, each agency's preferred pronunciations or spellings are also given in the table. In order to eliminate wide variations in pronunciation, posters illustrating the pronunciation desired are available from the ICAO. The ICAO states that the pronunciation of the words in the alphabet as well as numbers may vary according to the language habits of the speakers. In the interests of uniformity, the FAA style of stressed syllables in BOLD will be used here (underlines might be confused with links). The ICAO indicates unstressed numeric syllables in lower case (stressed in UPPER CASE), unlike its own alphabet, where stressed syllables are UNDERLINED UPPER CASE (unstressed in UPPER CASE). You can learn more about the development and implementation of this alphabet in the ICAO Museum, which is situated inside ICAO’s Montréal Headquarters.Unless otherwise specified, the spelling and pronunciation given is that officially prescribed by the ICAO and adopted by the FAA and the ITU. The words that represented the letters C, M, N, U and X were replaced, and the Organization completed its final version on 1 March 1956, which is still in use today worldwide. The minimum requirements for the words were to have similar spelling in English, French, and Spanish and to be live words in each of these languages.Īfter those studies and following consultations with communications experts and comments from all ICAO Member States, a new ICAO alphabet was adopted and incorporated in the Aeronautical Telecommunications Annex 10 for implementation in civil aviation. Through 19, Jean-Paul Vinay, professor of linguistics at the Université de Montréal in Canada, collaborated with ICAO’s language sector to develop a new spelling alphabet. Dissatisfaction with the existing internationally recognized phonetic alphabet submitted to ICAO for consideration led to the first draft of a proposed single universal alphabet. ICAO adopted its phonetic alphabet 70 years ago, on 1 November 1951, as a universal standard for communicating English letters over a phone or radio. Over the radio, this would be said as “Mike, tree, four, fife, November.” Consider an aircraft tail number such as M345N. Those include the number three, pronounced as tree (tri), five as fife and nine as niner. Therefore, a few of them are pronounced differently from their standard English pronunciation. Similar to the letters, the aim is to avoid confusion with other similar numbers. Not only are the letters in the ICAO phonetic alphabet assigned, but so are the numbers. The phonetic alphabet helps limit confusion between the cockpit and the tower. Because some letters sound similar (M and N or G and J), it can generate confusion between two people communicating with different accents or when the communication lines are poor. With short and simple words, ICAO’s phonetic alphabet lowers the chance of misunderstandings and increases operational safety for passengers and crew. The ICAO phonetic alphabet has assigned the 26 code words to the 26 letters of the English alphabet in alphabetical order: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. Members of the military, police, airline pilots and others working in the aviation and travel industry commonly use it. Also referred to as the ICAO Phonetic Alphabet and the NATO Alphabet (with some modifications), this universal spelling alphabet is a set of words used to clarify messages, no matter the spoken language. ICAO developed the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet to ease communication via telephone or radio and avoid misunderstandings when parts of a message containing letters and numbers are spelled out. When a pilot communicates with air traffic control, static and other interferences often lead to confusion with English language letters.
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