You’ve heard alfa, bravo, Charlie…but do you know where it came from?
When a pilot communicates with air traffic control, static and other interferences often lead to confusion with English language letters.
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.
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. Members of the military, police, airline pilots and others working in the aviation and travel industry commonly use it.
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.
With short and simple words, ICAO’s phonetic alphabet lowers the chance of misunderstandings and increases operational safety for passengers and crew.
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. The phonetic alphabet helps limit confusion between the cockpit and the tower.
Not only are the letters in the ICAO phonetic alphabet assigned, but so are the numbers. Similar to the letters, the aim is to avoid confusion with other similar numbers. Therefore, a few of them are pronounced differently from their standard English pronunciation.
Those include the number three, pronounced as tree (tri), five as fife and nine as niner. Consider an aircraft tail number such as M345N. Over the radio, this would be said as “Mike, tree, four, fife, November.”
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. Dissatisfaction with the existing internationally recognized phonetic alphabet submitted to ICAO for consideration led to the first draft of a proposed single universal alphabet.
Through 1948 and 1949, 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. 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.
After 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.
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.
You can learn more about the development and implementation of this alphabet in the ICAO Museum, which is situated inside ICAO’s Montréal Headquarters.
See more here: unitingaviation.com
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Barry
| #
Imagine how much less confusion in the world if this was taught in school,at thirty it took me months to become proficient with it. A seven year old would pick it up in two days.
Reply
Joseph Olson
| #
Powered flight was the greatest achievement of the 20th century. Aeronautical Engineering was invented by the Wright Brothers, their patents stolen by Rockefeller frontmen Alex Bell, Samuel Langley and Glenn Curtis. Wrights first flight was Dec 17, 1903. On Oct 14, 1947 Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier at 662 mph in Bell X-1 rocket plane. In 1953, Yeager set new record of 1,650 mph in Bell X-1A. All this Engineering was done with slide rules. Respect the intelligence and dedication of our ancestors.
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Joseph and PSI Readers,
I do not disagree with your good (even great) comment; however, I ask: How did the Wright Bros. achieve their feat???
I read that they began with a kite after which they observed soaring birds to discover how to control the flight of the glider. However, the first two gliders did not preform as necessary and forced the conclusion that the data they were using was faulty. So they constructed a wind tunnel and invented a balance to compare the LIFT of various surface shapes to find the BEST shape.
After the third glider performed as necessary they spent month in violent arguments to design the propellor which was an entirely different problem than the lift of the wing. For they see that propeller would screw itself through the air as pulled (or pushed) the wings through the air.
And it seems they supported their project with what their bike shop earned. Clearly the Wright Bros. were DOERS!!!
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Moffin
| #
Hi Jerry and readers.
It was claimed by a number of witnesses that a New Zealand farmer and inventor, Richard Pearse, flew a machine, motored, in controlled flight 9 months before the Wright brothers.
Have a nice day. Moffin.
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Moffin, Joseph and PSI Readers.
Moffin, I read the wiki article about Richard Pearse. Quite interesting. However, because my son in senior high school wrote a wrote a research paper about the Wright Bros achieve, I read three long biographies about them and their invention and I just had to check my memory about how many unsuccessful gliders they had built before they generated their own good data. But I have to admit I have a poor memory.
Joseph you considered that powered flight was the greatest achievement of the 20th century, do you have any thoughts of what might have been invented by a man who never went beyond the 7th grade, which he failed, and refused to .go any further? And Moffin, please feel free to suggest what might have been a second significant invention of the 20th Century. Just curious what you two and other PSI Readers might consider (know) who this inventor might have been what his invention might have been.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Moffin
| #
Hi Jerry, Jan, Howdy, and readers.
Biro’s ball point pen would win the prize for sheer numbers.
Cheers. Moffin.
Reply
Andrew Pilkington
| #
Interesting, thank you. I use it all the time myself, when identifying “Snot Rockets”, usually recorded while carrying out their Air Raids, but my use of the Phonetic Alphabet, came from the use of CB radio, back in 1981. I’d be lost without it, now 🙂
All the best.
Reply
JaKo
| #
The history of aviation is much more international and colorful than that insisted upon by the Yanks. BTW, the best description of the Wright’s affair is, IMHO, by Bob Newhart — gotta hear that!
All my involvement in aviation seems unreal now — last flight some 10-years ago; gee, almost 20-years buzzing around and a few hundred-hours sounds as if it never happened; it ended just like this: Deb… UNICOM, this is Romeo Zulu Whiskey, taxiing Bravo, leaving the active area…
So let’s fix it with a joke: “What is more exciting activity than flying an airplane?”
“Landing one…”
Am I wright Jerry: light-bulb?
Me thinks the most significant 20th century inventions alongside airplane were the radio, electric grid, nuclear devices, ENIAC and rockets to reach the space…
Cheers, JaKo
Reply
Bertie MacBeetle.
| #
Many from the Southern United States cannot utter the word Yankee so they use the word Y’all instead.
Reply