Originally Posted by treadigraph
Just realised that the codes I found were for something completely different anyway! Should have paid attention to what I was looking at...
PT, that list you linked to: presumably some of the call signs listed are for things other than aircraft? Eg XJA-XOZ Canada... Any ideas?
Yes, that's the International Telegraph Union list of allocations for anything radio-related. Covers ham call signs etc., but since airplanes have radios then the ITU assigns their callsigns too. And thus the international reggie prefixes
de facto.
Explains why 'new' countries don't often get prefixes which make sense - the obvious choices are already assigned.