ICAO
The UN's International Civil Aviation Organization: it sets the standards national regulators adopt, but regulates no airline directly.
Definition
ICAO is the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations specialised agency based in Montreal, created by the 1944 Chicago Convention and made up of 193 member states. It publishes Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) in the annexes to the Convention — Annex 6 covers aircraft operations, including cabin crew training and fatigue management — and guidance such as the Cabin Crew Safety Training Manual. Member states write the SARPs into their own law; ICAO itself licenses no one and inspects no airline.
What it means for you
You will rarely deal with ICAO directly, but almost every rule that governs your day descends from it: the airport codes on your roster, the phonetic alphabet in your briefing, the dangerous goods classes, the fatigue management principles behind every FTL scheme. The ICAO English language proficiency scale applies to pilots and controllers, not cabin crew, so an airline that asks for ICAO Level 4 is using it loosely. Knowing the ICAO layer explains why an EASA and a GCAA rulebook look so similar.
In practice
EASA's ORO.FTL, the FAA's Part 121 rest rule and the GCAA's UAE scheme all implement ICAO's Annex 6 requirement for fatigue management in their own numbers; the four-letter airport codes on your roster are also ICAO's.
Related terms
4 terms- EASARegulationEuropean Union Aviation Safety Agency — the EU regulator whose Air Operations rules set cabin crew training, attestation and duty limits.
- FAARegulationThe Federal Aviation Administration — US regulator whose Part 121 rules govern flight attendant training, duty and rest at US airlines.
- GCAARegulationGeneral Civil Aviation Authority — the UAE regulator overseeing Emirates, Etihad, flydubai and Air Arabia, with its own duty-time scheme.
- Dangerous goodsSafety & trainingItems that can endanger an aircraft — from lithium batteries to aerosols — and the rules on what passengers may carry and crew must handle.