The ICAO airline designator is a code assigned by the International Civil Aviation Organization to aircraft operating agencies, aeronautical authorities, and services. The codes are unique by airline which is not true for the IATA airline designator codes.
Each aircraft operating agency, aeronautical authority, and services related to international aviation is allocated both a three-letter designator and a telephony designator. The designators are listed in ICAO Document 8585: Designators for Aircraft Operating Agencies, Aeronautical Authorities and Services.
An example is:
- Three-letter designator – AAL
- Telephony designator – AMERICAN
- Operator – American Airlines
Certain combinations of letters are not allocated to avoid confusion with other systems (for example SOS). Other designators (particularly those starting with Y and Z) are reserved for government organizations.
Designator YYY is used for operators that do not have a code allocated.
Read more about this topic: Airline Codes-0
Famous quotes containing the words airline and/or designator:
“My job as a reservationist was very routine, computerized ... I had no free will. I was just part of that stupid computer.”
—Beryl Simpson, U.S. employment counselor; former airline reservationist. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“Let’s call something a rigid designator if in every possible world it designates the same object, a non-rigid or accidental designator if that is not the case. Of course we don’t require that the objects exist in all possible worlds.... When we think of a property as essential to an object we usually mean that it is true of that object in any case where it would have existed. A rigid designator of a necessary existent can be called strongly rigid.”
—Saul Kripke (b. 1940)