CAP 413 Radiotelephony Manual
Chapter 2 Page 11
Examples of formation callsigns are:
"BLACKCAT" – denotes a UK formation
"BLACKCAT 1" – denotes a UK single element
"DEADLY 31 flight" – denotes a United States Air Force (USAF) formation
"DEADLY 31" – denotes a USAF singleton.
1.9.6 Search and Rescue Callsigns
Callsigns for Search and Rescue are to be as follows:
• Fixed wing aircraft on SAR are to use the special 4 letter W/T callsigns, suffixed by
a 2 figure Mission Number. For voice, the word 'rescue' is used, suffixed by the
Mission Number.
• Helicopters on SAR are to employ the words 'rescue helicopter' suffixed by a
Mission Number. SAR squadron helicopters will use Pilot Number callsigns in
accordance with paragraph 3 when not engaged in SAR tasks using the trigraph
allocated to their base unit.
• SAR callsigns are also listed in the current edition of BAM/25/7.
1.9.7 Transit Flights
In the same way that aircraft of civil airlines have a callsign which identifies the parent
airline, military aircraft making transit (primarily overseas transit) flights requiring a
flight plan to be fed into the civil air traffic system should have a military identifier as
an element of the callsign as detailed in single Service regulations.
1.9.8 Callsign Abbreviation
Once positive contact has been established, and provided no possibility of confusion
exists, callsigns may be abbreviated as follows:
• For transit flights, a military identifier followed by whatever the air traffic controller
specifies once the full callsign has been used to identify the aircraft.
• On military communications the abbreviation should be:
• For Mission Numbers. As only the third element of the trigraph is always a
letter, the abbreviated callsign should be the third element followed by the
dinome.
• For Pilot Numbers. The first element of the callsign root followed by the
dinome or trinome.
However, in all cases the responsibility to shorten lies with ATC as they may be
dealing with many aircraft.
1.10 Continuation of Communications
1.10.1 The placement of the callsigns of both the aircraft and the ground station within an
established RTF exchange should be as follows:
Ground to Air: Aircraft callsign – message or reply.
Air to Ground:
a) Initiation of new information/request etc. – Aircraft callsign then message;
31 March 2011
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