The ICAO airline designator is a code assigned by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to aircraft operating agencies, aeronautical authorities, and services related to international aviation, each of whom is allocated both a three-letter designator and a telephony designator. These codes are unique by airline, unlike the IATA airline designator codes (see section above). The designators are listed in ICAO Document 8585: Designators for Aircraft Operating Agencies, Aeronautical Authorities and Services. ICAO codes have been issued since 1967.
An example is:
- Operator: American Airlines
- Three-letter designator: AAL
- Telephony designator: AMERICAN
Certain combinations of letters, for example SOS, are not allocated to avoid confusion with other systems. Other designators, particularly those starting with Y and Z, are reserved for government organizations.
The designator YYY is used for operators that have a code allocated.
Read more about this topic: Airline Codes
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)