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What are the airline code words?

Alpha, Bravo, Charli, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, PaPa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu.



Airline "code words" are specialized terminology used by crew and pilots to communicate clearly and subtly. "All Call" or "Cabin Crew, All Call" is a command for all flight attendants to pick up the interphone to verify that doors are armed or disarmed for departure or arrival. "Crosscheck" is a directive for one attendant to verify the work of another (usually that a door's emergency slide is correctly set). If you hear a pilot mention "Miracle Flight," it’s a cynical term for passengers who required wheelchair assistance to board but "miraculously" walked off the plane on arrival. "Deadhead" refers to an airline employee flying as a passenger to reach their next work assignment. "Bulkhead" refers to the wall separating different sections of the cabin. Pilots use "Flight Level" (e.g., FL380 for 38,000 feet) to denote altitude and "Final Approach" for the last segment of the landing path. Other subtle terms include "Equipment Change" (a different aircraft type), "Ground Stop" (air traffic control halting departures), and "Air Pocket" (a gentler way of saying turbulence).

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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.

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The terminology used in aviation is the whole of the concepts and codes uttered by the pilot, co-pilot, flight attendant, cabin crew, tower, traffic controller, etc. during a flight.

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This special jargon, called the Aviation Alphabet, uses the same 26 letters many of us learned in kindergarten. Each letter has a corresponding word used to identify aircraft, often called the tail number, and taxiways, which are just like the roads we drive on.

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Flight code and number There's generally a simple formula for this one: two uppercase letters, followed by a four-digit number. The letters are the airline code, or the numbers universally recognized to represent the name of the airline in shorthand. Some are obvious—AA is American Airlines, for example.

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Some squawk codes are reserved, such as 7700 (emergency), 7600 (communication failure), 7500 (hijacking), 1202 (glider), 1200 (VFR), etc. One of these, 7777, is apparently used for military interception. What does this mean in the United States?

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Squawk codes are what air traffic control (ATC) use to identify aircraft when they are flying. They are unique four-digit numbers and range from 0000 to 7777; some of which are fixed values signifying specific scenarios (see below), others being randomly generated by ATC.

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Codes in the range QAA–QNZ are reserved for aeronautical use; QOA–QQZ for maritime use and QRA–QUZ for all services. Q has no official meaning, but it is sometimes assigned a word with mnemonic value, such as Queen for example in QFE: Queen's field elevation, or Query, Question, reQuest.

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K ? United States The prefix K is generally reserved for the contiguous United States. The ICAO codes for these airports are usually the FAA location identifier prefixed with a K.

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