Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Alphabets of Aviation

About the Book

Intended for anyone who reads aviation literature, this guide contains over 12,000 shorthand expression used in aviation, past and present. The coverage is inclusive of general and technical terms, civil and military, also aeronautical, bureaucratic, commercial, geographical, mechanical, medical, meteorological, operational, and organizational terms — as related to aviation. All the abbreviations, acronyms, and alphabets — contractions or shorthand expressions, including mnemonics and even codes — were found in current and past aviation literature, including articles, books, charts, handbooks, manuals, maps, placards, weather reports, and notices to airmen. Often terms appeared without definition, in the apparent assumption that the meaning was general knowledge, and it may have been to the intended audience at that time. Many of the expressions stand for more than one thing, like MEL being "minimum equipment list" or "multi-engine landplane." TC could be "top of cylinder," "training center," "Trans Caribbean Airways," "Transport Canada," "transportation corps," "troop carrier," "tropical cyclone," "true course," "turbocharged," "turn coordinator," or "type certificate" — depending upon the context. Annotations in this volume are to help identify context. Some annotations place terms in time; for example, when did AFCC refer to the Air Force Combat Command, when to the Air Force Communications Command, and when to Air Force Cyberspace Command?

About the Author

Anne Millbrooke was born in western Oregon and raised on the coast of Washington state. She went east to college, first to Boise State College in Idaho for a bachelor’s degree, then to the University of Wisconsin at Madison for a master’s degree, and finally to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia for her doctorate. Her field of study was history. She directed the Archive and Historical Resource Center at United Technologies Corporation, and thereby served as the historian for Pratt & Whitney, Hamilton Standard, Sikorsky, and other divisions of the corporation. She taught history at universities in Alaska, Connecticut, and Montana. Along the way, she has won Mellon, Smithsonian, National Science Foundation, and NASA fellowships. Now a freelance writer, she lives in Bozeman. Her latest major publication is a revised, updated edition of her award-winning Aviation History book.