Aviation Buzz

Welcome to the Terms / Info page. Here you will find useful information regarding common terms used in this blog. Within a matter of minutes, you’ll know the meaning of terms such as: RPMs, ASMs, ILS and IFR. Hope this helps.

Note: More Info will be added as time moves on. This is not a complete list.

- Looking for a specific airport, airline, or airplane?
Try Wikipedia. 99.9% of the information is correct, and plenty is written about each topic.

- Airline Business Measurements:
I have to thank American Airlines for this. They are the only airline, to my knowledge, that has posted a nice overview of the key measurements used in the airline business.

Available Seat Mile (ASM), A Measure of Capacity: One seat, filled or unfilled, equals one available seat mile.
Revenue Passenger Mile (RPM), A Measure of Production: A passenger paying for flying one mile. 200 Passengers flying 300 miles = 60,000 RPMs
Load Factor, Production Compared to Capacity: System wide load factor = RPMs / ASMs. For individual flight load factor = Revenue Passengers on board / aircraft capacity.
Yield, Revenue per Passenger Mile: System wide = Passenger Revenue / RPMs. Customer’s yield = ticket price / mileage.
Revenue per Available Seat Mile (R/ASM): Load factor x Yield.
Cost per Available Seat Mile (C/ASM): Unit costs = Total operating expenses / Total ASM capacity.

- Basic Aviation Terms:

ALPA: Typically refers to the Air Line Pilots Association, a union for pilots.
ATA: Air Transport Association. (Also beware of the defunct ATA Airlines)
ATC: Air Traffic Control.
FAA: Federal Aviation Administration.
FL: Flight Level. Flight Level is usually used to refer to altitudes. FL030 is 3,000 ft. FL350 is 35,000 ft.
IFE: In-Flight Entertainment system.
IFR: Instrument Flight Rules. Allows pilots to fly in sever weather, clouds, and allows pilots to enter Class A airspace and fly using instruments only.
NTSB: National Transportation Safety Board.
VFR: Visual Flight Rules. A pilot flying VFR must maintain VFR rules. They are not allowed to enter Class A airspace (18,000 ft – 60,000 ft in the United States). VFR pilots usually will spend more time looking outside the cockpit rather than inside, unlike IFR pilots.

- Prefixes and Suffixes:

(A)320: The ‘A’ typically refers to Airbus.
(B)737: The ‘B’ typically refers to Boeing.
737-800(W): The ‘W’ typically refers to Winglets.
767-300(ER): The ‘ER’ refers to Extended Range.
777-200(LR): The ‘LR’ refers to Long(er) Range.

- Company Abbreviations:

AA, AAL, AMR: American Airlines.
BA, BAW: British Airways.
DAL: Delta Air Lines.
CAL or COA: Continental Airlines (stock Symbol CAL).
JBLU: JetBlue Airways.
NWA: Northwest Airlines.
UAL: United Airlines (parent company UAL Corp).
US Air: US Airways.
WN, LUV, SWA: Southwest Airlines (WN common on tail registration, LUV stock symbol)

- More:

Still can’t find what it means, try these websites (thanks to my Dad for finding these):

Aviation Acronyms and Abbreviations
Glossary of Airport Acronyms (FAA)
More Acronyms
Acronyms (Large database)

- Looking for a specific airport, airline, or airplane?
Try Wikipedia. 99.9% of the information is correct, and plenty is written about each topic.

- Want a specific term included in this page? Tell me!