2 October 2007
The CAA has overnight allocated every G- registered aircraft a unique ICAO 24-bit aircraft address.
These new addresses will be used principally in the administration of Mode S, where each aircraft needs a unique identifier; however, it can be used for other airframe-specific applications such as emergency locator beacons.
Previously, aircraft owners requiring one of these 24-bit addresses would have had to apply specifically to the CAA; a process which ran overnight last night, however, has now allocated an address to each aircraft on the register, regardless of whether they’re ever likely to use Mode S or not. Note that aircraft which have been deregulated or deregistered will not have an address – it only applies to current or new registrations.
The CAA tells us that it won’t be contacting individual owners to tell them about their new ID number, but all the numbers are readily available on <a href=’http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?catid=60&pagetype=65&appid=1′ target=’_blank’>G-INFO</a>, the CAA’s database of aircraft registrations.
