At some time or another we have to deal with a call centre – either to secure a reservation, set a seat… or sometime to spell our names.
Therefore, it’s good to use a common alphabet when dealing with them – and the “gold standard” is the ICAO Spelling Alphabet.
Letters become words which are pronounceable by all, and understandable by all – which makes the ICAO Spelling alphabet standard – anywhere in the world (with some regional variations).
Wikipedia has an excellent article on it, but lets get down to practicalities.
Firstly, the actual alphabet:
| Letter | Code word | Letter | Code word | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Alpha | N | November | |
| B | Bravo | O | Oscar | |
| C | Charlie | P | Papa | |
| D | Delta | Q | Quebec | |
| E | Echo | R | Romeo | |
| F | Foxtrot | S | Sierra | |
| G | Golf | T | Tango | |
| H | Hotel | U | Uniform | |
| I | India | V | Victor | |
| J | Juliett | W | Whiskey | |
| K | Kilo | X | X-ray | |
| L | Lima | Y | Yankee | |
| M | Mike | Z | Zulu |
And it if you need to spell something, then use the phonetics. For example, if I was to spell the name Zarkov*, you’d spell that as Zulu, Alpha, Romeo, Kilo, Oscar, Victor.
If you were spelling out an airport code, for example Chicago O’Hare, that would be Oscar, Romeo, Delta (ORD).
And so on. It’s a useful tool if you have to spend hours sitting on a phone to call centre…..
* Yes, I was watching Flash Gordon last night – doesn’t show does it?
