The International Air Transport Association finalizes a draft of the Radiotelephony spelling alphabet for the International Civil Aviation Organization.
The International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, commonly known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, NATO spelling alphabet, ICAO phonetic alphabet or ICAO spelling alphabet, is the most widely used radiotelephone spelling alphabet. The ITU phonetic alphabet and figure code is a rarely used variant that differs in the code words for digits.
To create the code, a series of international agencies assigned 26 code words acrophonically to the letters of the English alphabet, so that the names for letters and numbers would be as distinct as possible so as to be easily understood by those who exchanged voice messages by radio or telephone, regardless of language differences or the quality of the connection. The specific code words varied, as some seemingly distinct words were found to be ineffective in real-life conditions. In 1956, NATO modified the then-current set of code words used by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO); this modification then became the international standard when it was accepted by the ICAO that year and by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) a few years later. The words were chosen to be accessible to speakers of French and Spanish in addition to English; the spellings of a couple of code words were changed to facilitate their use.
Spelling alphabets are often inaccurately called "phonetic alphabets", but they do not indicate phonetics and cannot function as phonetic transcription systems like the International Phonetic Alphabet.
The 26 code words are as follows: 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. Numbers are read off as English digits, but the pronunciations of three, four, five, nine and thousand are modified.Strict adherence to the prescribed spellingsincluding the apparently misspelled "Alfa" and "Juliett"is required in order to avoid the problems of confusion that the code is designed to overcome. A 1955 NATO memo stated that:
It is known that [the spelling alphabet] has been prepared only after the most exhaustive tests on a scientific basis by several nations. One of the firmest conclusions reached was that it was not practical to make an isolated change to clear confusion between one pair of letters. To change one word involves reconsideration of the whole alphabet to ensure that the change proposed to clear one confusion does not itself introduce others.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA ) is a trade association of the world's airlines founded in 1945.
Consisting in 2016 of 290 airlines, primarily major carriers, representing 117 countries, the IATA's member airlines account for carrying approximately 82% of total available seat miles air traffic. IATA supports airline activity and helps formulate industry policy and standards. It is headquartered in Canada in the city of Montréal, with executive offices in Geneva, Switzerland.