Civil Aviation

Civil aviation is one of two major categories of flying, representing all non-military and non-state aviation, both private and commercial. Most of the countries in the world are members of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and work together to establish common standards and recommended practices for civil aviation through that agency.

Civil aviation includes three major categories:
  • Commercial air transport, including scheduled and non-scheduled passenger and cargo flights
  • Aerial work, in which an aircraft is used for specialized services such as agriculture, photography, surveying, search, and rescue, etc.
  • General aviation (GA), including all other civil flights, private or commercial.
Some countries also make a regulatory distinction based on whether aircraft are flown for hire like:
  • Commercial aviation includes most or all flying done for hire, particularly scheduled service on airlines; and
  • Private aviation includes pilots flying for their own purposes (recreation, business meetings, etc.) without receiving any kind of remuneration.
All scheduled air transport is commercial, but general aviation can be either commercial or private. Normally, the pilot, aircraft, and operator must all be authorized to perform commercial operations through separate commercial licensing, registration, and operation certificates.

Non-civil aviation is referred to as state aviation. This includes military aviation, state VIP transports, and police/customs aircraft.

Civil Aviation Authorities

The Convention on International Civil Aviation (the "Chicago Convention") was originally established in 1944; it states that signatories should collectively work to harmonize and standardize the use of airspace for safety, efficiency, and regularity of air transport. Each signatory country, of which there are at least 193, has a civil aviation authority (such as the FAA in the United States) to oversee the following areas of civil aviation.
  • Personnel licensing - regulating the basic training and issuance of licenses and certificates.
  • Flight operations - carrying out safety oversight of commercial operators.
  • Airworthiness - issuing certificates of registration and certificates of airworthiness to civil aircraft, and overseeing the safety of aircraft maintenance organizations.
  • Aerodromes - designing and constructing aerodrome facilities.
  • Air traffic services - managing the traffic inside of a country's airspace.
Registered Codes

Airport codes
ICAO uses 4-letter airport codes (vs. IATA's 3-letter codes). The ICAO airport code or location indicator is a four-letter code designating aerodromes around the world. These codes, as defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization and published in ICAO Document 7910: Location Indicators, are used by air traffic control and airline operations such as flight planning.

Airline codes
ICAO also assigns 3-letter airline codes (versus 2-letter IATA codes, for example, UAL vs. UA for United Airlines).

Both ICAO and IATA have their own airport and airline code systems.

Aircraft registrations
ICAO maintains the standards for aircraft registration ("tail numbers"), including the alphanumeric codes that identify the country of registration. For example, airplanes registered in the United States have tail numbers starting with N.

Aircraft type designators

An aircraft type designator is a two-, three- or four-character alphanumeric code designating every aircraft type (and some sub-types) that may appear in flight planning. These codes are defined by both the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Air Transport Association. ICAO codes are published in ICAO Document 8643 Aircraft Type Designators and are used by air traffic control and airline operations such as flight planning. While ICAO designators are used to distinguish between aircraft types and variants that have different performance characteristics affecting ATC, the codes do not differentiate between service characteristics (passenger and freight variants of the same type/series will have the same ICAO code). IATA codes are published in Appendix A of IATA's annual Standard Schedules Information Manual (SSIM) and are used for airline timetables and computer reservation systems. IATA designators are used to distinguish between aircraft types and variants that have differences from an airline commercial perspective (size, role, interior configuration, etc).

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