International Civil Aviation Organization Organisation de l'aviation civile internationale (in French)
ABBREVIATION ICAO OACI ИКАО 国际民航组织 إيكاو
FORMATION 4 April 1947
TYPE UN specialized agency
LEGAL STATUS Active
HEAD Fang Liu Secretary General
The INTERNATIONAL CIVIL AVIATION ORGANIZATION (ICAO) (pronounced
/aɪˈkeɪ.oʊ/ ; French : Organisation de l'aviation civile
internationale, OACI), is a specialized agency of the
The ICAO Council adopts standards and recommended practices
concerning air navigation, its infrastructure, flight inspection ,
prevention of unlawful interference, and facilitation of
border-crossing procedures for international civil aviation . ICAO
defines the protocols for air accident investigation followed by
transport safety authorities in countries signatory to the Chicago
Convention on International Civil Aviation
ICAO is distinct from other international air transport
organizations, like the International Air Transport Association
(IATA), a trade association representing airlines ; the Civil Air
* 1 History * 2 Statute * 3 Membership * 4 Council
* 5 Standards
* 5.1 Aerodrome Reference Code
* 6 Registered codes * 7 Regions and regional offices
* 8 Leadership
* 8.1 List of Secretaries General * 8.2 List of Council Presidents
* 9 ICAO and climate change
* 9.1 Agreement on CO2 emissions from international aviation, October 2016
* 10 Investigations of air disasters * 11 See also * 12 References * 13 External links
The forerunner to ICAO was the INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR AIR
NAVIGATION (ICAN). It held its first convention in 1903 in
Fifty-two countries signed the Convention on International Civil
Aviation , also known as the
In April 2013
The 9th edition of the Convention on International Civil Aviation
includes modifications from 1948 up to year 2006. ICAO refers to its
current edition of the Convention as the Statute, and designates it as
ICAO Document 7300/9. The Convention has 19 Annexes that are listed by
title in the article
Convention on International Civil Aviation
The Council of ICAO is elected by the Assembly every 3 years and consists of 36 members elected in 3 categories. The present Council was elected on 4 October 2016 at the 39th Assembly of ICAO at Montreal . The structure of the present Council is as follows:
PART I – (States of chief importance in air transport) – Australia*, Brazil*, Canada*, China*, France*, Germany*, Italy*, Japan*, Russian Federation*, United Kingdom*, and the United States*.
PART II – (States which make the largest contribution to the provision of facilities for international civil air navigation) – Argentina*, Colombia, Egypt*, India*, Ireland, Mexico*, Nigeria*, Saudi Arabia*, Singapore*, South Africa*, Spain* and Sweden.
PART III– (States ensuring geographic representation)- Algeria, Cape Verde, Congo, Cuba, Ecuador, Kenya*, Malaysia*, Panama, Republic of Korea*, Turkey, United Arab Emirates*, United Republic of Tanzania*, and Uruguay.
Note * indicates re-election.
ICAO logo. TOP: ICAO acronym in English, French/Portuguese/Spanish, and Russian. BOTTOM: ICAO acronym in Chinese and Arabic
ICAO also standardizes certain functions for use in the airline industry, such as the Aeronautical Message Handling System (AMHS). This makes it a standards organization .
Each country should have an accessible Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP), based on standards defined by ICAO, containing information essential to air navigation . Countries are required to update their AIP manuals every 28 days and so provide definitive regulations, procedures and information for each country about airspace and airports. ICAO's standards also dictate that temporary hazards to aircraft are regularly published using NOTAMs .
ICAO defines an International Standard Atmosphere (also known as ICAO Standard Atmosphere), a model of the standard variation of pressure , temperature , density , and viscosity with altitude in the Earth\'s atmosphere . This is useful in calibrating instruments and designing aircraft.
ICAO standardizes machine-readable passports worldwide. Such passports have an area where some of the information otherwise written in textual form is written as strings of alphanumeric characters, printed in a manner suitable for optical character recognition . This enables border controllers and other law enforcement agents to process such passports quickly, without having to enter the information manually into a computer. ICAO publishes Document 9303 Machine Readable Travel Documents, the technical standard for machine-readable passports. A more recent standard is for biometric passports . These contain biometrics to authenticate the identity of travellers. The passport's critical information is stored on a tiny RFID computer chip, much like information stored on smartcards . Like some smartcards, the passport book design calls for an embedded contactless chip that is able to hold digital signature data to ensure the integrity of the passport and the biometric data.
ICAO is active in infrastructure management, including Communication
AERODROME REFERENCE CODE
Aerodrome Reference Code NUMBER FIELD LENGTH
1 < 800 m (2,625 ft)
2 800–1,200 m (2,625–3,937 ft)
3 1,200–1,800 m (3,937–5,906 ft)
4 ≥ 1,800 m (5,906 ft)
Aerodrome Reference Code LETTER WINGSPAN MAIN GEAR SPAN AIRBUS BOEING
A < 15m (49.2')