International Civil Aviation Organization
International Civil Aviation Organization
Formation
April 1947
Headquarters
Montreal, Canada
Membership
190 member states
Official languages
Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and
Spanish
Secretary General
Taïeb Chérif
Website
http://www.icao.int
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO),
an agency of the United Nations, codifies the principles and
techniques of international air navigation and fosters the
planning and development of international air transport to
ensure safe and orderly growth. Its headquarters are located
in the Quartier International of Montreal, Canada.
The ICAO Council adopts standards and recommended
practices concerning air navigation, prevention of unlawful
interference, and facilitation of border-crossing procedures
for international civil aviation. In addition, the ICAO
defines the protocols for air accident investigation followed
by transport safety authorities in countries signatory to the
Convention on International Civil Aviation, commonly
known as the Chicago Convention.
The ICAO should not be confused with the International
Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade organization for
airlines also headquartered in Montreal.
ICAO Codes
Both ICAO and IATA have their own airport and airline
code systems. ICAO uses 4-letter airport codes and 3-letter
airline codes. IATA is scheduled to eventually switch its
codes to the ICAO standard. In the continental United
States, the ICAO codes are usually the same as the IATA
code, with a prefix of "K" — LAX is KLAX. Canada
follows a similar pattern, where a prefix of "C" is usually
added to an IATA code to find the ICAO code — YEG is
CYEG. In the rest of the world, the codes are unrelated, as
the IATA code is phonic and the ICAO code is location-
based; for example, Charles de Gaulle ICAO:LFPG,
IATA:CDG.
ICAO is also responsible for issuing alphanumeric aircraft
type codes that contain 3 or 4 characters. These codes
provide the identification that is typically used in flight
plans. An example of this is the Boeing 747 that would use
(depending on the variant) B741, B742, B743, etc.
ICAO provides telephony designators to aircraft operators
worldwide. These consist of the three-letter airline identifer
and a one- or two-word designator. They are usually, but
not always, similar to the aircraft operator name. Thus the
identifer for Aer Lingus is EIN and the designator is
Shamrock, while Japan Airlines International is JAL and
Japan Air . Thus, a flight by Aer Lingus numbered 111
would be written as "EIN111" and pronounced "Shamrock
One-Eleven" on the radio, while a similarly numbered
Japan Airlines flight would be written as "JAL111" and
pronounced "Japan Air One-Eleven".
ICAO maintains the standards for aircraft registration ("tail
numbers"), including the alphanumeric codes that identify
the country of registration.
ICAO statute
The 9th edition of the Convention on International Civil
Aviation includes modifications from 1948 up to year 2006
. The ICAO refers to its current edition of the Convention
as the statute, and designates it as ICAO Doc 7300/9.
The Convention has 18 Annexes. These Annexes are listed
by title in the article Convention on International Civil
Aviation.
ICAO standards
The ICAO also standardizes certain functions for use in the
airline industry, such as the Aeronautical Message
Handling System AMHS; this probably makes it a
standards organization.
The ICAO defines an International Standard Atmosphere
(also known as ICAO Standard Atmosphere), a model of
the standard variation of pressure, temperature, density, and
viscosity with altitude in the Earth's atmosphere. This is
useful in calibrating instruments and designing aircraft.[1]
The ICAO standardizes machine-readable passports world-
wide.[2] Such passports have an area where some of the
information otherwise written in textual form is written as
strings of alphanumeric characters, printed in a manner
suitable for optical character recognition. This enables
border controllers and other law enforcement agents to
process such passports quickly, without having to input the
information manually into a computer. ICAO publishes
Doc 9303, Machine Readable Travel Documents, the
technical standard for machine-readable passports. A more
recent standard is for biometric passports. These contain
biometrics to authenticate the identity of travellers. The
passport's critical information is stored on a tiny RFID
computer chip, much like information stored on smartcards.
Like some smartcards, the passport book design calls for an
embedded contactless chip that is able to hold digital
signature data to ensure the integrity of the passport and the
biometric data.
Regions and regional offices
The ICAO has seven regional offices serving nine regions:
1. Asia and Pacific, Bangkok, Thailand
2. Middle East, Cairo, Egypt
3. Western and Central Africa, Dakar, Senegal
4. South America, Lima, Peru
5. North America, Central America and Caribbean,
Mexico City, Mexico
6. Eastern and Southern Africa, Nairobi, Kenya
7. Europe and North Atlantic, Paris, France
