ICAO Designators for Motorgliders

[Steve Sliwa]

Here is a note we received from the FAA:

Dear sirs,

I am with FAA Headquarters and a staff specialist in air traffic procedures. I'm writing to raise awareness, through TMGA, to owners/operators about the availability of unique aircraft type designators (abbreviations) for many motor gliders. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) provides a aircraft type designators, which are used in flight plans and during air-ground communications with air traffic control/flight service, for most of the world's aircraft.

During recent analysis of aircraft utilizing air traffic service, I have observed that some aircraft have used "GLID" as the designator; where in fact, several of these aircraft have already been assigned a unique designator by ICAO. Examples are the DG FLUGZEUGBAU DG-1000T (ICAO: DG1T), the GROB G-109 Ranger (ICAO: G109), and the SCHEIBE SF-25 Falke (ICAO: SF25).

ICAO provides a free link to search for aircraft type designators at:

http://www.icao.int/publications/DOC8643/Pages/default.aspx

TMGA's ability to potentially reach many more motorglider owners/operators will greatly assist me in notifying people about the availability of unique aircraft type designators. The use of standard designators greatly assists air traffic to provide safe and efficient operations.

Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Keith

[Kalopa]

Here is a email that I received from 1800wxbrief.com regarding ICAO experimental aircraft codes.

Mr Loewenhardt,

 

Good morning. Generally experimental aircraft are not assigned an ICAO compliant equipment code. I did a search by clicking the magnifying glass next to the aircraft type field on the flight plan mask and entered in AMS and it did not return anything.

 

Luckily they have aircraft types just for this purpose. Please see the table below.

 

Homebuilt/Experimental Aircraft

Criteria	Designator	Climb Rate (FPM)	Descent Rate (FPM)	SRS Category
Aircraft with cruise (indicated) airspeeds of 100 knots or less	HXA	500	500	I
Aircraft with cruise (indicated) airspeeds of greater than 100 knots, up to and including 200 knots	HXB	750	750	I
Aircraft with cruise (indicated) airspeeds of greater than 200 knots	HXC	1,000	1,000	I

 

You can use HXA, HXB or HXC depending on your general climb and decent rates listed above. This should allow you to file for your aircraft. You can find this again by clicking on Help / Contractions Lookup or go here: https://www.1800wxbrief.com/Website/utilitiesContractions

 

If you really want to dig into the weeds, you can search for aircraft in the official FAA contractions manual (JO 7340.2) here: http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/orders_notices/index.cfm/go/document.information/documentID/1021047

 

It’s a fairly large document but lists all contractions that the FAA uses, including aircraft type designators.

 

Hopefully this helps. Thank you for using our website. Please let us know if you have any additional questions. Thank you.

 

Michael Shea

AFSS Support Manager

Lockheed Martin Corporation