Getting a call sign

[nouseforaname]

Hi,

Does anyone know how you can get a call sign for yourself/organisation or aircraft or whatever?? instead of the G-XXXX i want to have a word like hear quite a lot in airways.

Any help much appreciated.

[2Donkeys]

These used to be fairly freely available, and all you had to do was ask. Nowadays, the policy is to require any applicant to hold an AOC.

If you hold one, there is an AIC with the appropriate contact details - essentially a chap in NATS Heathrow who forwards your application to ICAO Montreal. The whole process remains free, but takes a couple of months to process.

2D

[nouseforaname]

what is an AOC?

thanks

[helicopter-redeye]

AOC = Air Operators Certificate

Is that the case though? Two of my regular clients (both flying school, neither with an AOC) have call signs.

Can be confusing for ATC though ("so your now XXXX Heli 2 are you?").

Info about this would be interesting though.

h-r

[Sensible]

It's an Aircraft Operators Certificate, essentially it's a licence to operate commercial aircraft be it passenger, cargo or crop spraying etc. Not something that your average PPL would be obtaining!

[Droopystop]

An AOC is an Aircraft Operators Certificate which is basically the piece of paper issued by the CAA that allows a company to operate aircraft for the purposes of public transport and other commercical work. It is certainly not free (talking 10 to 20k), requires a large amount of paper work including an operations manual, affects the way the aircraft is maintained and who flys it.

I must admit that I was sorry to see that an AOC is required - it would be nice to have your own call sign.

[helicopter-redeye]

Oops, three at once...:E

[2Donkeys]

It may well be that the schools concerned obtained their callsigns prior to the change in the CAA approach to callsigns. The change is relatively recent - within the last 5 years or so. The other possibility is that many schools do hold AOCs - these may be two cases in point.

2D

[TD&H]

Getting a callsign doesn't actually mean ATC will use it!!!

You'll be given a three letter code, say, xbc, which will then be referenced by ICAO as NewBoy or whatever you wish to be called. It of course must be a sensible word. But ATC won't necessarily know, without looking at a flightplan strip that XBC1 should be called 'NewBoy One'. It is only through familiarity that ATC know to call flight BA012 'Speedbird Twelve'.

So you'll have to file a flight plan with the correct registration on it, with a remark that XBC should be pronounced NewBoy, and even then you'll be called XBC One by most ATCs. We know by experience this happened for our AOC operation, such that it was easier to revert to the registration.

Even the larger FTOs which have callsigns only have them used by ATC that are familiar with the reference when they see their short code displayed.

Now why do you want to waste all that time and effort getting a callsign?

[2Donkeys]

Don't confuse the allocation of a Callsign with the allocation of a so-called Three-Letter-Designator.

A Callsign can be issued without a TLD although this does not remove the requirement to hold an AOC.

2D

[FlyingForFun]

TD&H,

What you're saying makes sense if you're on an IFR flight plan. But for an off-airways flight, where you're just free-calling the relevant services, surely you announce yourself as "NewBoy1", and that's the only thing ATC will ever know you as? (Not sure what they'd write on their strip if they didn't happen to know that NewBoy is XBC, but that's their problem, not ours!!!)

I also know of several flying schools with their own callsigns, some of them have AOCs but others I'm 99% sure don't. Maybe they were allocated the callsigns before the change of rules, as 2Donks says. Interesting point, though: most of these schools allocate one callsign to each instructor. Thus the callsign moves from one aircraft to the next as the instructor moves around. And solo students have to revert to the aircraft registration. I'm not a big fan of this - it means that when you send a student solo, you are asking him to do something which he has never done before, i.e. use a completely different call-sign. First solo seems like a bad time to add any extra workload to a student, to me - especially knowing how some students struggle to pick out a call-sign they are familiar with on the r/t, let alone one they've never heard before. I only know of one school which has a call-sign for each aircraft, regardless of who is flying the aircraft. This seems like a better way of doing it, from the student's point of view at least. Would I be right in guessing that the school can basically decide for themselves how they are going to use their callsign?

FFF
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[2Donkeys]

Would I be right in guessing that the school can basically decide for themselves how they are going to use their callsign?

That is correct. Once allocated, within reason, the numbers and letters that follow the callsign are at the discretion of the operator.

2D

[helicopter-redeye]

there is an AIC with the appropriate contact details - essentially a chap in NATS Heathrow who forwards your application to ICAO Montreal


Which AIC (h-r cannot locate)?

h-r

[2Donkeys]

Found it!

http://www.ais.org.uk/aes/pubs/aip/pdf/aic/4W060.PDF

White 60.




2D

[nouseforaname]

i think that you can just decide which call sign your going to use irrespective to the aircraft once as it's operated by the same organisation or person. I was with a king air pilot the other day and he used one call sign going to where we went and another similar one on the way back.

this must be the case.

thanks anyway.

[Kit d'Rection KG]

Strictly speaking, the reg's (sorry, no time to hunt them down) require you to use the aircraft reg, type, or ICAO-approved callsign, ONLY. Although you might get away with making up a callsign for a while, and using it, you would be breaching this legislation. Sometimes, in the past, it was possible to make local arrangements with an ATCU - I did this for a survey contract which had unusual requirements, and agreed with the local (big) radar unit that we would be such-and-such, every day. This worked well, until I called LATCC once for a 121.5 comms check, and the unusual nature of our callsign left them wondering what we were up to...

Regarding controllers knowing the callsign word, TD&H is right only in a limited sense. Most large ATCCs have the callsign word printed in small characters above the callsign on the Flight Progress Strip, so BA012 would have SPEEDBIRD printed above the BA012. Of course, most callsigns end up being committed to memory...

[helicopter-redeye]

Thanks 2D. Can't understand why I did not spot it.

h-r

[The Nr Fairy]

Went through this process last year for a helicopter company.

Fax the completed form to someone in London, wait 6 or so weeks, start using callsign.

Mind you, "Spellbound" does leave some controllers with a tonguetwister, so much so that one refused to use it and asked me the a/c reg !

And using the same number for "Spellbound" and A N Other heli company meant I had to remember which hat I had on that particular day.

[Evil J]

And to answer an earlier query, from an ATC point of view if we don't know (or you don't have ) a 3 letter code we will just write what you are calling yourself out in full-if you're on a flight plan the 3 letter will get printed on the strip, most NATS units have the callsign appearing next to the 3 letter code on the strip, where I work we don't so if its not one we know, I (or the assistant) has to look it up in a big ICAO book or (more normally) we ask the centre that is handing the flight to us. If no-one know it you will generall get called your 3 letter code phonetically. So to quote the earlier example, if we dont know that XBC01 is Newboy01, you will get called X-ray bravo charlie 01.

And just to clarify British Airways "Speedbird" is BAW not BA! But i'm sure you all knew that anyway:D :D

[DFC]

The only real advantage I can see in having an Aircraft Operator Designator / Callsign is when using multiple aircraft to operate a particular series of flights.

If using G-ABCD, should the aircraft go U/S then the flight plan must be cancelled and a new one filed (slot delays?).

If using ABC123 then should the chosen aircraft go U/S then only a change has to be filed giving the new registration to be used.

It also helps to identify the flight as belonging to an operator or as an aircraft that performs certain special trasks eg police or calibration flights.

Someone earlier stated that an organisation paired callsign with aircraft - what a waste of effort!

From a practical point of view having obtained the callsign then all flights by that operator should use that callsign. The numbers used should be co-ordinated so that thay do not conflict with others on the system at the same time eg don't want a BAW002 and an AFR002 and a ABC002 all turning up on the same frequency.

G-ABCD can be abreviated to G'CD. ABC123 must alsways be ABC123 in full - think about R/T loading!

Is this not getting like the whole "personal registration plate" craze in the UK? - pointless.

Regards,

DFC

[slim_slag]

I cannot quite put my finger on it, but flying around in a spamcan using a callsign sounds like good olde snobbery

[dublinpilot]

"Liverpool Approach, SpamCan335"
"SpamCan335 Liverpool Approach, pass your message"

Got a ring to it?

[Fried_Chicken]

And solo students have to revert to the aircraft registration. I'm not a big fan of this - it means that when you send a student solo, you are asking him to do something which he has never done before, i.e. use a completely different call-sign.

One of the Flying Schools at an airport in the Midlands add a S (Sierra) to the end of the callsign to indicate a student first solo

Someone earlier stated that an organisation paired callsign with aircraft - what a waste of effort!

A fair few of companies flying corporate aircraft have fixed callsigns for aircraft or pilot

Fried Chicken