Banfield From Austria, joined Jul 2000, 23 posts, RR: 0 Posted (10 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 6 hours ago) and read 1329 times:
Airliners have, depending in which country they are registrated, national registrations. But what for they are standing for?
E.g. N for US Airliners means something like national, D- for German Airliners means Deutschland (which is the German name for Germany), G- for UK Airliners maybe Great Britain.
But what means B- for Chinese Airliners, or HB- for swiss planes?
OH-LZA From Finland, joined Jun 2001, 1000 posts, RR: 5 Reply 1, posted (10 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 6 hours ago) and read 1306 times:
Some registration country codes just are unlogical, I guess ICAO would be a better instance to answer this. Here are a few more examples:
9M- Malaysia
9V-Singapore
CS- Portugal
HS- Thailand
LN- Norway
OH- Finland
OK- Czech Republic
OY- Denmark
SP- Poland
SX- Greece
VH- Australia
VT- India
ZK- New Zealand
ZS- South Africa
Some additional logical ones:
C- Canada
F- France
I- Italy
OE- Austria (OE=Ö=first character of Austria's name in German, Österreich)
Na From Germany, joined Dec 1999, 9614 posts, RR: 10 Reply 2, posted (10 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 6 hours ago) and read 1291 times:
I know there´s a heritage for the country prefixes. But a random one. There´s no logic and in many cases no meaning behind the country prefix on regs. If so, why "5N-" for Nigeria, "9V-" for Singapore or "VH-" for Australia? And why has Brazil two prefixes, "PP-" and "PT-"?
"D-", "I-", or "F" are clear, but why has Spain "EC-" then, when logically "E-" would be more appropriate? And why has Britain a "G-", when "GB-" would make more sense.
I ask myself why these prefixes haven´t been changed to the one´s used for cars long time ago.
Turbulence From Spain, joined Nov 1999, 963 posts, RR: 24 Reply 4, posted (10 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 5 hours ago) and read 1268 times:
Well, I wouldn't bet.
Actually, as you say, some registrations seem to be "logical":
C-Canada
I-Italy
F-France
HA-Hungary
OE-Austria (The german name Österreich, being orthographically correct to add an "e" in substitution of a diaeresis: Oesterreich)
EC-Spain (the "e" for "España", the "c" for "civil")
TS-Tunisia
LX-Luxembourg
In Switzerland, maybe the H has something to do with "Helvetia", the name of the country being "Confédération Helvetique" in French. Since it has a Federal kind of administrative distribution, maybe the B stands for some kind of "Bundes-whatever", which is the german word for federal.
I assume that given some logical two letter combinations, the number of possibilities is quite reduced, thus just giving "free" combinations of two letters or one letter+one number, but I am just speculating. Nevertheless, I assume that two digit combinations are not enough for giving each country a "logical" abbreviation.
Aztec01 From United States of America, joined Mar 2001, 144 posts, RR: 3 Reply 5, posted (10 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 5 hours ago) and read 1257 times:
Klik From Canada, joined Oct 2000, 152 posts, RR: 0 Reply 9, posted (10 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 5 hours ago) and read 1232 times:
Hibernia has nothing to do with Switzerland..... it's the name of a major oil field in Newfoundland (Canada). Switzerland's official title is neither French, German, Italian nor Rumantsch, but latin: Confederatio Helvetica... Helvetica being the ancient name of the present area of switzerland.
On a separate note, I remember reading once that some countries' registration codes are the initials of aviation pioneers from the country.
Greenjet From Ireland, joined Aug 2001, 924 posts, RR: 1 Reply 10, posted (10 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 4 hours ago) and read 1214 times:
Hibernia was also what the Romans called Ireland. Just to stay on topic the EI code which Irish aircraft bear is because in Irish the country is called Eire.
Lapper From United Kingdom, joined Mar 2002, 1507 posts, RR: 8 Reply 11, posted (10 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 4 hours ago) and read 1218 times:
if that would be right, the US should have at least a dozen different prefixes...
Not neccessarily. The US registrations are N followed by numbers followed by letters, usually the carriers 2 letter code for the majors. Therefore it is possible that you can have N695AA and N695UA. The possibilities are virtually unlimited.
Turbulence From Spain, joined Nov 1999, 963 posts, RR: 24 Reply 12, posted (10 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 4 hours ago) and read 1203 times:
OK, OH-LZA, I assume they are progressively getting rid of the RA- registration, which otherwise is logical. At an end, only Russia should remain with RA-, being normal each country having an own code.
BTW, Na, do not mix Country (=independent politically and administrative state with frontiers and political personality) with State (=administrative unit of a federally organized country, like Brazil, USA, Germany -although they call them "Land" in singular or "Länder" in plural- etc)
California, Massachussets, Iowa, Ohio, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington, Illinois, Florida, etc., are not comparable to "post-USSR" Azerbaitjan, Turkmenistan, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, etc.
LJ From Netherlands, joined Nov 1999, 4149 posts, RR: 1 Reply 13, posted (10 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 4 hours ago) and read 1175 times:
First, Brazil has 3 ICAO country codes (PP, PT and PR). As for the PH for The Netherlands. This probably is explainable. before "PH" the Dutch country code was H. However they changed it to "PH". The meaning of the "P" is open for debate. Either they used a "P" to point to Plesman (founder of KLM) or it's due to "Poste Hollande" (as explained by Flanor in a previous discussion).
Anyway it's my believe that the initial country codes have been determined around 1929 at an ICAN convention (as the ICAO didn't even exist at the time). Given the fact that aviation was dominated by the military and postal services I think that one of these two is the answer.
Backfire From Germany, joined Oct 2006, 0 posts, RR: 0 Reply 16, posted (10 years 9 months 2 weeks 2 days 23 hours ago) and read 1061 times:
Use of the N registration, assuming the standard six-character identifier, theoretically gives you 676,000 aircraft IDs. That's about 50 times the total world airliner fleet.
Of course it also limits you to 1,000 aircraft if you maintain a fixed two-letter suffix identifying your airline. But since it's only American which is even close to that problem, it hardly matters. Besides it's easy to overcome; just extend the registration to a four-digit numerical section.
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