It's no wonder there are so many tragic aeroplane accidents, with pilots having to remember the a completely arbitrary phonetic alphabet. It must be espcially confusing to those unfamiliar with Shakespeare.
I suggest an easy-to-remember replacement:
Abel Babel Cable... Gable Fable Mabel Table ...you get the idea.-- Mickey the Fish, Nov 22 2000 Threebrain.com http://www.threebrain.comCheck out the video for the alphabet song [pantagruel, Oct 04 2004] aisle, bile, cue, dial, eh, file, gnu, heir, insure, knew, ...-- mab, Nov 22 2000 Ridiculous. Everyone would just have to learn a whole new alphabet of confusing words - and can you think of a single subject to which everyone is familiar with every word? And besides, most pilots are old, they would never agree to such a drastic change.-- baby_steffee, Apr 03 2001 Bah, just replace each letter by a number. You know, A as in 1, B as in 2, &c.-- centauri, Apr 03 2001 "Most pilots are old..."
I'd love to see a source for that one...-- PotatoStew, Apr 03 2001 A for 'orses, B for mutton, ... F for vescent, G for the Indians, I for Novello, L for leather, M for sis, ... O for the wings of a dove, Q for the bus, R for mo, .. T for two, U for me, V for Zapata-- angel, Apr 23 2001 The point of the "phonetic alphabet" is that the words are easily distinguished even if they are partly obscured by static, faint, or otherwise unintelligible. "Abel Babel Cable ..." would be absolutely atrocious; you'd be better off with the "Aye Bee See ..." that everyone already knows.
I've never met anyone remotely close to aviation or the military who has any trouble remembering the standard "Alpha Bravo ... Yankee Zulu" alphabet. (And what does it have to do with Shakespeare, anyway?)-- egnor, Apr 23 2001 R is Romeo. That's the only connection I see.-- bookworm, Apr 23 2001 Like the pilots of old, Shake-spear was in the military. (Yeah...)-- wasraw, Apr 24 2001 And Mickey, since every word would rhyme the pilots and tower could easily convey their alphabetic information in rhymed couplets! An added bonus!-- Dog Ed, Apr 24 2001 Finally, an idea even more ridiculous than any of mine... I have no evidence to back this, but I'd be pretty surprised if many of these 'tragic aeroplane accidents' were being caused because a pilot couldn't think of a letter...-- Zhade, Aug 26 2001 P as in psychology, K as in knee, T as in thirsty, O as in oestrogen, C as in chicane...-- Hans, Aug 26 2001 angel - do you know the whole of the a for horses rhyme i've been trying to remember it for ages
as long as the word is clear over other noise, static etc it doesn't matter what the word is: a for about-turn b for bertie c for clever d for dalmatian etc-- po, Aug 26 2001 At the end of a question, one needs to put a ?, and at the end of a sentence, one puts a . . <- Like that.
Part of the purpose of a standardized phonetic alphabet is to keep people from going blank...Quick! What's a word that begins with J?
Also, standardized words help over static, as if you only hear part of the word, it's unique enough that you can often pick it up anyway.-- StarChaser, Aug 26 2001 The Cockney Alphabet
A for 'orses (or A for Gardner) B for mutton C for miles (or C for yourself or C for th highlanders) D for dumb (or D for ential or D for mation) E for brick (or E for Peron) F for vescence (or F for had been) G for police H for beauty (or H for himself or H for retirement 65) I for lutin' (or I for Novello or I for an eye or I for the girls) J for oranges K for teria (or K for ansis or K for restaurant) L for leather M for sis (or M for cream sherry or M for seema) N for a penny (or N for lope or N for a dig) O for the wings of a dove! (or O for the rainbow or O for the garden wall) P for relief Q for a bus (or Q for the theatre or Q for a song) R for mo (or R for Askey) S for me to know and you to find out (or S for rantsen) (or S for C) T for two (or T for gums) U for me (or U for instance) V for Espana (or V for la France or V for Zapata or V for voce) W for a bet (or W for a quid) X for breakfast Y for husband (or Y for mistress or Y for crying out loud) Z for breezes (or Z for cars)
(I combined various sources, and put the ones I like first)
(There's still a few I don't understand (Z for cars, M for cream sherry), and there's a lots of old British references a lot of people won't get. )-- pottedstu, Sep 22 2001 pottedstu: 'Emva' was a brand of (I think) Cyprus Cream Sherry (when stuff not from Jerez could still be so called).
Isn't Z just a reference to Z-Cars (that is, ZED cars) the old police series on the BBC? Could be wrong here. Maybe it's the old Ford Zephyr?-- snagger, Sep 22 2001 Or Datsun/Nissans, frex '280z'.-- StarChaser, Sep 23 2001 I feel that we must have been trolled. I find it hard to imagine that anyone could so completely miss the point of a phonetic alphabet.
Not to mention..."Eable" and "Iable"? "Cable" and "Kable" and "Qable"?
No. I'm assuming M-the-F is a troll. Even if he could have honestly had an idea this bad, he couldn't possible have failed to run it through that simplistic a check.
...could he?-- Meowse, Oct 06 2001 pottedstu, you spent a lot of time on that Cockney Alphabet. You must really care.-- Salty Ham, Jan 10 2002 I hold my hands up. It was a troll. Apologies to all who bit. But there ain't no law against it, eh jutta?-- Mickey the Fish, May 10 2002 I am a pilot myself...and from my point of view, it becomes second-nature to you once you use it alot. It is very hard for people that do not know what it is, or have never heard it before to understand and memorize it. But, when you really want to be a pilot, and you love your job, you learn the alphabet; pretty much automatically. OH YEA...and crashes dont happen because someone forgot to say Kilo Juliet instead of Kay Jewlers. So you people are exaggerating A LOT!
BTW: not all pilots are old!-- newguy, Dec 03 2002 I think there was something about the phonetic alphabet that it's supposed to be pronouncable in any language. A=Alfa, not Alpha because other languages don't have the ph sound.
And R=Romeo and J=Juliet...That's Shakespeare.
A=Alfa R=Romeo...that's a car with no Z.-- jasonh300, Dec 03 2002 The Z for Cars bit is a reference to a Ford car sold in Britain in the 1960s called the Ford Zephyr (which "z for" sounds a little bit like)-- NelsonPK, Apr 18 2003 Can't you just say every thing twice?
Plane Plane 1 1 A A G G 2 2 Coming Coming In In?-- phundug, Apr 18 2003 Sorry to drag this one up again. I've just been browsing. About 8 years ago, I used overhear engineers in my team trying to spell things over the phone using car names and so on. Of course, for some letters they stumbled a bit. Actually, most of them used Whisky OK, since they came from Scotland. It prompted me to make a list as follows:
A for Aye (Scottish for "yes") B for Bee C for Chaos D for Decay E for Eye F for Fro G for Gnome H for Honor I for I J for Juventus K for Knot L for Leather (I see this is quite popular) M for Mnemonic N for Not O for Oestrogen P for Psalm Q for Queue R for Rapt S for Sea T for Tsar U for Uwe V for Vie W for Why X for Xylophone Y for You Z for Zeus
Some of them are not so good - can anyone improve?-- Ling, Jan 16 2004 Um yeah, there's alpha, bravo, charlie...
A large percentage of commercial airline pilots are retired military pilots, and so, yes. Many if not most pilots are old.-- RayfordSteele, Mar 25 2004 random, halfbakery