Originally Posted by tarheelnj

Funny. Check out the German phonetic equivalent for X and Y. Do you actually pronounce those letters in German?

Originally Posted by luke5111

I'm one of those that goes with anything that comes to mind. A for Arthur, B for Bread or anything else that comes to mind. Never had an issue in 35 years of flying. Don't think anybody needs to learn any particular code, it works just fine if you use regular words.

Originally Posted by JAXPax

Interesting the difference between airlines. Spirit makes all agents learn the phonetic alphabet (and all of the city codes) prior to coming to training - first thing they do on day one is take a test from memory and if they fail, they go home.

Originally Posted by SPN Lifer

Yes, this is indeed too demanding.

It is a First World problem,

I concur. During my first two years of law school, I was a Reservations Sales Representative (RSR) at UA SFORR from 1985-87.

New phone agents have enough to learn — including airport codes, SSR & SSI (Spec. Serv. Req. & Spec. Serv. Info.) codes, fare basis codes & rules, and dozens of new travel & work rules, processes, and procedures — without being forced to memorize a phonetic alphabet system. It would be too low on the six-week introductory training priorities, especially given the low (high school) education prerequisites, low salary, and tightly controlled, highly monitored environment in which RSRs work.

As a Naval Academy graduate, I had known the NATO phonetic alphabet since my days as a 17-year-old Plebe, and used it routinely when providing Passenger Name Record (PNR) record locators to customers, for efficiency. I would always say, "K as in Kilo", for example, to minimize the need for repetition, as one of the primary performance metrics for an RSR is calls per hour (CPH).

I noticed some of my colleagues doing this to help reduce their own CPH, and whether they used one of the phonetic alphabets listed above in Post # 27, or made up their own, was of no import.
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​​​​​Use of the NATO alphabet, specifically, is unnecessary.

Far more important is that customers and employees alike practice patience and respect for our mutual human dignity. "A smile can be heard over the phone."

OP = original post

I am one of the multitude who access FlyerTalk exclusively by cell phone, thus seeing no signatures. I clicked on the relevant user profile and, to save everyone else time, post my findings here:

Originally Posted by lincolnjkc

I remember airport* codes (served by that airline) being an element featuring in another airline documentary from long ago -- can't remember if it was WN, F9, or someone else requiring all of their FA recruits to pass a similar test. But I think that may be as much a difference between airlines as it is times changing -- heck, with every other revision United.com can't figure out CLE and ORD without selecting the full city name from the drop-down (currently it is working, which I appreciate)

*- hair splitting: relatively few cities have IATA city codes (encompassing more than one airport in a metro region, e.g. NYC = (LGA | EWR | JFK) WAS = (DCA | IAD | (BWI?)) LON = (LHR | LCY | (LTN?))), PAR = (CDG | ORY). Doesn't help confusion that LAX is both a city and airport code.