European ICAO code confusion

[TheFirstDohrnPilot]

Hi everyone. I've looked on Google and I can't seem to find an answer. Why in the world does the ICAO code for some European countries begin with the letter "E" and for others the letter "L"? For example UK is EG, Holland is EH, Germany ED, Norway EN, etc, etc... Makes perfect sense: E for Europe and N for Norway.

So why do France, Switzerland, Spain, Greece etc use "L"?

Thanks :)

[Bealzebub]

This (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Civil_Aviation_Organization_airport_code) should help.

[the_stranger]

E for northern countries, L for southern.... (don't know where the L stands for....)

[proxus]

I was once told the L stands for Latin. The only connection I could imagine was that those countries having L in their airport codes have their languages based on latin.

Wild Guess maybe?

[TheFirstDohrnPilot]

Yes, I looked on that link and E is for the Northern countries and L for the Southern ones. It might have something to do with the way the majority of air routes flow, ie. N-S or E-W, I've been told.
Nice idea with that Latin thing but I don't think the people who thought of these codes really care about something like that. Never know though! haha

When I looked at the country codes, I realised, they should definitely make the airplane call sign codes the same as the country codes. Would make life so much easier!

[Crazy Voyager]

When I looked at the country codes, I realised, they should definitely make the airplane call sign codes the same as the country codes. Would make life so much easier!

What do you mean by this? Most ICAO airline designators are fairly obvious (SAS Scandinavia, RYR Ryanair, SHT Shuttle, etc etc). Sure a few of them are a bit more strange but I don't find them that complicated.

[TheFirstDohrnPilot]

No, what I mean is like for UK aircraft the letter for the callsign is G-.... In the US, it's N.... in Germany D.... but for the ICAO airport codes its K in the US, EG for UK, ED for Germany etc etc! Why??? haha

[Crazy Voyager]

International Civil Aviation Organization airport code - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Civil_Aviation_Organization_airport_code)


Code selections in North America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America) were based on existing radio station identifiers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_sign#Broadcast_call_signs). For example, radio stations in Canada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada) were already starting with "C", so it seemed logical to begin Canadian airport identifiers with Cxxx. The United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States) had many pre-existing airports with established mnemonic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic) codes. Their ICAO codes were formed simply by prepending a K to the existing codes, as half the radio station identifiers in the US began with K. Most ICAO codes outside the US and Canada have a stronger geographical structure.
Most of the rest of the world could be classified in a more planned top-down manner, as they didn't have as much established aviation legacy. Thus Uxxx referred to the Soviet Union (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union) with the second letter denoting the specific region within it, and so forth. Europe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe) had too many locations for only one starting letter, so it was split into Exxx for northern Europe and Lxxx for southern Europe. The second letter drilled down: EGxx was the United Kingdom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom) (G for Great Britain), EDxx was both West Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germany) and East Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany) (D for Deutschland), LExx was Spain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain) (E for España), LAxx was Albania, and so on. France (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France) was designated LFxx, as the counterpart EFxx was the unambiguously northern Finland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland). (originally OFxx, as the more rigid geographical structure evolved over time; in the beginning, countries usually had "blocks" of codes; for example, Finland still has the country identifier OH- in its aircraft registrations)




That's why :)