Last reviewed on 26 August 2026.
The order of the letters
The NATO alphabet runs in ordinary alphabetical order, so the letter after Alfa is Bravo, the letter after Bravo is Charlie, and so on. In full: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. Nothing is reordered and nothing is skipped — the only thing that changes between letter and code word is what you say out loud.
Letter by letter
Each entry below gives the code word, the ICAO pronunciation with the stressed syllable capitalised, the Morse character, and the reasoning that put that word on the list rather than an obvious alternative.
A — Alfa
Say: Alfa · Pronunciation: AL-fah · Morse: ·−
Spelled Alfa, not Alpha. ICAO dropped the "ph" because that pair is not read as an /f/ sound in every language that uses the Latin alphabet, and a misread first letter is the worst possible place to lose a listener.
B — Bravo
Say: Bravo · Pronunciation: BRAH-voh · Morse: −···
B is the classic confusable — with D, P, T, V and E in English. Bravo has a stressed open first syllable that none of the others share, which is exactly why it earns its place.
C — Charlie
Say: Charlie · Pronunciation: CHAR-lee · Morse: −·−·
Charlie replaced Coca when the 1951 list was revised into the 1956 standard; the earlier word tested poorly for speakers who could confuse it with other C-words on a noisy channel.
D — Delta
Say: Delta · Pronunciation: DELL-tah · Morse: −··
Standard everywhere, with one famous local exception: at Atlanta's Hartsfield–Jackson airport, ground movements substitute another word for D to avoid collision with Delta Air Lines call signs.
E — Echo
Say: Echo · Pronunciation: ECK-oh · Morse: ·
The shortest Morse character (a single dot) belongs to the most common letter in English — deliberate, and inherited from Morse rather than from ICAO.
F — Foxtrot
Say: Foxtrot · Pronunciation: FOKS-trot · Morse: ··−·
Two hard consonant clusters make Foxtrot cut through static. It is rarely confused with anything, which is why it survived every revision unchanged.
G — Golf
Say: Golf · Pronunciation: GOLF · Morse: −−·
One syllable, and one of only two code words that is (Golf and Mike). Speakers tend to rush it — give it the same length as the words either side of it.
H — Hotel
Say: Hotel · Pronunciation: hoh-TELL · Morse: ····
Stress falls on the second syllable: hoh-TELL. Front-stressing it makes it sound like Hotel the noun and loses the contrast with Echo on a poor line.
I — India
Say: India · Pronunciation: IN-dee-ah · Morse: ··
I and E are the pair most often mixed up in spoken English strings. India and Echo share no stressed vowel, which resolves it.
J — Juliett
Say: Juliett · Pronunciation: JEW-lee-ETT · Morse: ·−−−
The double T is intentional. French speakers routinely drop a final consonant, and Juliet with one T collapses into "Julie". The extra letter forces the ending to be pronounced.
K — Kilo
Say: Kilo · Pronunciation: KEY-loh · Morse: −·−
First syllable as in key, not as in kill. The metric prefix pronunciation is the one ICAO published.
L — Lima
Say: Lima · Pronunciation: LEE-mah · Morse: ·−··
LEE-mah, like the Peruvian capital, not LY-mah like the bean. Some operators in Southeast Asia avoid it in mixed numeric traffic because lima is the Malay and Indonesian word for five.
M — Mike
Say: Mike · Pronunciation: MIKE · Morse: −−
M is Mike. M and N are the single most confused pair in spoken English — both nasal, both in the same frequency band. Mike and November share nothing, which is the whole point.
N — November
Say: November · Pronunciation: no-VEM-ber · Morse: −·
Stress the middle syllable. In US aviation, November also opens every domestic civil registration, so it is heard more than any other code word in that airspace.
O — Oscar
Say: Oscar · Pronunciation: OSS-cah · Morse: −−−
O is Oscar. Note the published pronunciation ends in a weak -cah, not a hard -car; the rhotic ending is optional and regional.
P — Papa
Say: Papa · Pronunciation: pah-PAH · Morse: ·−−·
P is Papa, stressed on the second syllable — pah-PAH, the French pattern, not the English PAH-pah. Front-stressing it makes it collide with Bravo.
Q — Quebec
Say: Quebec · Pronunciation: keh-BECK · Morse: −−·−
Q is Quebec, said keh-BECK. The opening syllable is reduced almost to nothing; the weight is all on the second.
R — Romeo
Say: Romeo · Pronunciation: ROW-me-oh · Morse: ·−·
Three clear syllables with the stress at the front. R is one of the letters most degraded by low-bandwidth audio, so the word carrying it is deliberately long.
S — Sierra
Say: Sierra · Pronunciation: see-AIR-rah · Morse: ···
S is Sierra. S and F are a common confusion in English — both voiceless fricatives. Sierra and Foxtrot could not sound less alike, which resolves it.
T — Tango
Say: Tango · Pronunciation: TANG-go · Morse: −
A single dash in Morse, and a strongly front-stressed word in speech. T, D and B form a cluster in English; Tango, Delta and Bravo do not.
U — Uniform
Say: Uniform · Pronunciation: YOU-nee-form · Morse: ··−
U is Uniform. The published pronunciation opens with a you- glide. Some non-English speakers say OO-nee-form; both are understood, and ICAO tolerates the variation.
V — Victor
Say: Victor · Pronunciation: VIK-tah · Morse: ···−
V and B are near-identical for many Spanish speakers. Victor and Bravo differ in stress, length and opening consonant, which is what makes the pair safe.
W — Whiskey
Say: Whiskey · Pronunciation: WISS-key · Morse: ·−−
Spelled with the -ey ending in the ICAO list. The opening is closer to wiss than hwiss in the published pronunciation.
X — X-ray
Say: X-ray · Pronunciation: ECKS-ray · Morse: −··−
Hyphenated in the official list. Stress the first element — ECKS-ray — so that the letter itself is what a listener hears first.
Y — Yankee
Say: Yankee · Pronunciation: YANG-key · Morse: −·−−
The published pronunciation nasalises the first syllable: YANG-key. It is a long, distinctive word for a letter that is otherwise easy to lose.
Z — Zulu
Say: Zulu · Pronunciation: ZOO-loo · Morse: −−··
Z is Zulu, and the word does double duty: Zulu time is Coordinated Universal Time in aviation, military and maritime usage, written with a trailing Z.
Why these words and not others
The 26 words were not picked for elegance. Between 1948 and 1956, candidate lists were tested by speakers of English, French and Spanish under simulated radio conditions, and words that survived degraded audio without being mistaken for a neighbour stayed in. Several from the earlier 1951 list did not survive that testing and were replaced for the 1956 standard — the revision that produced Charlie, Mike, November, Uniform and X-ray in their current form.
Two constraints shaped nearly every choice. A word had to be pronounceable and recognisable to a speaker of any of the major aviation languages, which is why abstract international nouns and place names dominate the list. And it had to be acoustically distant from the other 25, particularly from the letters it is most often confused with in ordinary speech: B/D/P/T/V, M/N, F/S, and I/E. The pronunciation guide goes through the specific decisions in more detail, and the 1956 ICAO standard covers how the list was ratified.
Using the letters in practice
Say the code word in place of the letter, one letter at a time, and read digits individually: Sierra Mike India Tango Hotel, one two three, not Smith one hundred twenty-three. Do not mix in improvised words halfway through a string — switching from Sierra to "S for sugar" mid-sequence is where listeners lose track. To spell a whole name or reference at once, use the phonetic alphabet converter; to keep the full set to hand on paper, print the phonetic alphabet chart.