Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta... the phonetic alphabet that ensures error-free communication has turned 70 this month. Introduced on November 1, 1951, the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet popularly called NATO spelling alphabet continues to unify the global aviation industry.
The phonetic alphabet has 26 words for the 26 letters of the English alphabet: Alpha, 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.
Interestingly, India is the only country, and Lima and Quebec are the only two cities in the list.
A typical instruction from the air traffic control (ATC) to the pilot steering an aircraft on a runway will be something like this: Alpha Bravo Charlie on Taxiway November cross Runway One Eight. The pilot’s response will be “on November, crossing runway One Eight, Alpha, Bravo Charlie.’
UN agency
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) — UN’s specialised agency for civil aviation — adopted 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. This continues to be in existence for the last 70 years.
The ICAO adopted its phonetic alphabet as a universal standard for communicating English letters over a phone or radio. 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. Some letters that sound similar (M and N or G and J) 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, says an ICAO report.
“When you use the radio telephony alphabets, you cannot misunderstand a word,” explains Mohan Ranganathan, an aviation consultant and a former pilot. For the aviation industry, the phonetic alphabet is the most critical communication language , said a retired pilot with over 30 years of international flying. “By and large all over the world, communication is as per ICAO standard, except the pronunciation. But while flying into Saudi Arabia, the letter W, which is called Whiskey, they call it Water,” he said.