Aviation alphabet

When radio arrived in aviation it became clear that ordinary spelling didn't work: between static, accents and roaring engines, a B and a V sound identical, and mishearing one letter can change a runway, a heading or a registration. After several attempts (like the famous wartime "Able, Baker", designed only for English speakers), ICAO commissioned linguists to find words that anyone, in any language and over a poor connection, could tell apart without error. The result was adopted in 1956 and is the alphabet still alive today on every frequency on the planet.

Every word was chosen —and sometimes deliberately misspelled— to survive the radio: Alfa is written with an f so nobody doubts its sound, Juliett carries a double t with French speakers in mind, and the numbers have their own pronunciation (niner for 9, tree for 3, fower for 4) so they can't be confused with each other or with other words. In spotting it is our language too: every registration we log during the streams is spelled with it — EC-MYT is Mike, Yankee, Tango. Learn it and aviation will speak to you more clearly.