The ICAO Annexes

The ICAO Annexes are the technical heart of international air law. The Chicago Convention of 1944 sets out principles, such as sovereignty over airspace and the recognition of licences, and empowers ICAO to adopt detailed international standards under Article 37. Those standards are published as Annexes to the Convention, nineteen of them, each identified by a number and a subject, from Annex 1, Personnel Licensing, to Annex 19, Safety Management.

Pilots meet the Annexes indirectly. A licence follows Annex 1, the rules of the air follow Annex 2, a METAR follows Annex 3, and runway markings follow Annex 14, but each reaches the pilot through national or European law: Part-FCL, SERA, the Air Operations Regulation. Air law papers ask which Annex covers what, and what the key provisions of the main ones are. This article summarises each Annex and points to the Library articles that explain it; the Convention itself and ICAO's organisation are covered in Chicago Convention and ICAO.

Annexes, SARPs and PANS

The Annexes contain Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs). A Standard is a specification whose uniform application is necessary for the safety or regularity of international air navigation: States follow it or notify ICAO of a difference. A Recommended Practice is desirable, and States endeavour to follow it. SARPs are prepared by the Air Navigation Commission and adopted by the ICAO Council by a two-thirds majority.

Detail that would overload an Annex goes into Procedures for Air Navigation Services (PANS), which the Council approves rather than adopts and recommends for worldwide use. Several companion documents are examined as often as the Annexes themselves:

SARPs are addressed to States, not to pilots, and are not directly binding. They become law for a pilot only when a State, or the European Union for its Member States, writes them into regulation (see PANS-ATM, PANS-OPS and EASA regulatory framework).

Annexes 1 to 5: licensing, rules, meteorology, charts, units

• Annex 1, Personnel Licensing. The SARPs on which States base their pilot, engineer and controller licences and medical standards. ICAO issues no licences, and many authorities, the FAA and EASA among them, apply their own rules rather than Annex 1 unchanged: EASA Member States apply Part-FCL and Part-MED, which differ in detail. France, for instance, lists the 45 hours of flight instruction that Part-FCL requires for the PPL(A) as a difference in category A, the letter its list uses for more exacting rules (see pilot licensing framework).
• Annex 2, Rules of the Air. The general, visual and instrument flight rules. They apply to aircraft bearing the nationality and registration marks of a Contracting State wherever they are, unless they conflict with the rules of the State overflown, and over the high seas they apply without exception. They may be departed from only when absolutely necessary in the interests of safety. Annex 2 forbids flying while impaired by alcohol or drugs but sets no blood-alcohol limit; EASA's 0.2 per thousand for crews is a European rule. In the EU, SERA transposes the rules of the air (see rules of the air).
• Annex 3, Meteorological Service for International Air Navigation. What must be observed and forecast, and the formats of METAR, TAF, SIGMET and the charts. It sets, for example, the range in which RVR is reported, 50 to 2,000 m (see meteorological services and briefings).
• Annex 4, Aeronautical Charts. Chart types, content, symbols and accuracy, so that a pilot trained in one State can read the charts of another. SID and STAR charts are published under Annexes 11 and 4 together (see aeronautical charts).
• Annex 5, Units of Measurement to be used in Air and Ground Operations. The units for aeronautical measurements. Each State's AIP states the units it uses in its GEN part; France notifies no difference from Annex 5 at all (see units of measurement).

Annexes 6 to 10: operations, registration, airworthiness, facilitation, telecommunications

• Annex 6, Operation of Aircraft. Published in three parts: Part I for aeroplanes in international commercial air transport, Part II for international general aviation aeroplanes and Part III for helicopters. It holds the Standards behind air operator certificates, operations manuals, crew training, equipment, fuel and aerodrome operating minima, including the current definition of Category III: a decision height below 30 m (100 ft) or none, and an RVR below 300 m or no limit (see ICAO Annex 6).
• Annex 7, Aircraft Nationality and Registration Marks. Aircraft categories, marks and the certificate of registration. An aeroplane is a power-driven, heavier-than-air aircraft deriving its lift from fixed wings (see aircraft registration and documents).
• Annex 8, Airworthiness of Aircraft. The engineering side of airworthiness, complementing the operational side in Annex 6. Its Standards for large aeroplanes apply to aeroplanes over 5,700 kg maximum certificated take-off mass intended for the carriage of passengers, cargo or mail in international air navigation. The State of Registry issues the certificate of airworthiness (see ICAO Annex 8 and type certification).
• Annex 9, Facilitation. The clearance of aircraft, crew, passengers and cargo across borders. It builds on Article 22 of the Convention, which obliges States to facilitate and expedite air navigation, and Article 23 on customs and immigration procedures. A State accepts a crew member certificate for temporary admission, without passport or visa, when the crew leave on the same or the next regular flight (see facilitation).
• Annex 10, Aeronautical Telecommunications. Five volumes, among them Volume I on radio navigation aids such as the ILS, VOR, DME and GNSS, Volume II on communication procedures, Volume III on communication systems and Volume V on frequency use, including 121.5 MHz and the air-to-air frequency 123.45 MHz (see aeronautical telecommunication services).

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Annexes 11 to 15: ATS, SAR, investigation, aerodromes, AIS

• Annex 11, Air Traffic Services. Air traffic control, flight information service and the alerting service, together with the ATS airspace classes. Each State sets up an authority responsible for ATS. Its five objectives run from preventing collisions to notifying search and rescue organisations, with PANS-ATM supplying the detailed procedures (see air traffic services and airspace classification).
• Annex 12, Search and Rescue. Each State provides SAR services in its territory on a 24-hour basis and assists aircraft in distress and survivors whatever their nationality (see alerting service and search and rescue).
• Annex 13, Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation. The objective of an investigation is the prevention of future accidents and incidents, not blame or liability. An accident can occur from the time a person boards with the intention of flight until all have disembarked; a serious injury includes hospitalisation for more than 48 hours beginning within 7 days. ICAO is notified of accidents and serious incidents to aircraft over 2,250 kg and receives the final report for aircraft over 5,700 kg (see accident and incident investigation).
• Annex 14, Aerodromes. Volume I covers aerodrome design and operations, Volume II heliports. It standardises physical characteristics, markings, lighting, obstacle limitation and rescue and fire fighting, whose operational objective is a response time of no more than 3 minutes to any point of each operational runway in optimum visibility and surface conditions. Under Article 15 it applies to aerodromes open to public use (see aerodrome physical characteristics and aerodrome lighting).
• Annex 15, Aeronautical Information Services. Since the 16th edition, applicable from November 2018, aeronautical information is provided as products: the AIP with its amendments and supplements, AICs, NOTAM, charts and digital data sets. Operationally significant changes take effect on AIRAC dates 28 days apart (see aeronautical information services).

Annexes 16 to 19: environment, security, dangerous goods, safety management

• Annex 16, Environmental Protection. Volume I sets the noise standards an aircraft type must meet for its noise certificate (see noise abatement procedures and aircraft noise and emissions).
• Annex 17, Security. Its subtitle is Safeguarding International Civil Aviation against Acts of Unlawful Interference. Each State runs a written national civil aviation security programme and specifies to ICAO the authority responsible for it. A State on whose territory a hijacked aircraft has landed keeps it on the ground unless its departure is necessary to protect human life (see aviation security).
• Annex 18, The Safe Transport of Dangerous Goods by Air. The broad SARPs; the detail of the list of dangerous goods, packing, labelling, documentation and training sits in the Technical Instructions, Doc 9284 (see dangerous goods).
• Annex 19, Safety Management. Adopted in 2013 as the newest Annex, it gathered the safety management provisions previously spread across other Annexes. Each State runs a State safety programme, and operators, maintenance and training organisations, air navigation service providers and aerodromes run safety management systems built on four components and twelve elements (see safety management systems).

Adoption, amendment and differences

The Annexes are living documents. Each is amended continually and periodically reissued as a new edition, so a reference to an Annex is precise only with its edition and amendment number. France's list of differences records, for example, the eleventh edition of Annex 2 with amendment 48, the fifteenth edition of Annex 11 with amendment 53 and the sixteenth edition of Annex 15 with amendment 43, all applicable from 28 November 2024. The amendments to Annexes 3 and 4 took effect the same day, so several Annexes can change on a single date.

No State is obliged to accept a Standard. Under Article 38, a State that cannot comply in all respects, or adopts rules that differ, must notify ICAO of the difference, and ICAO informs the other States. The State then publishes its significant differences in its AIP, in GEN 1.7, Annex by Annex. France's GEN 1.7 marks each entry A, B or C in a column headed CAT. The list itself gives no key, but nearly every entry that qualifies its difference uses the same words for the same letter:

Many of France's differences are European rather than national: they arise because the EU regulations, which France must apply, do not match the Annex word for word. Over the high seas no difference is possible, because Annex 2 then applies without exception.

Exam traps

• 11, 12, 13. The alerting service belongs to Annex 11, Air Traffic Services, not to Annex 12, which covers search and rescue itself. Investigation is Annex 13.
• 14 and 15. Aerodromes are Annex 14; the AIP, NOTAM and AIRAC are Annex 15.
• 17 and 18. Security is Annex 17; dangerous goods are Annex 18, with the detail in Doc 9284.
• Adopted or approved. The Council adopts SARPs, by a two-thirds majority, and approves PANS. SARPs are adopted under Article 37; differences are notified under Article 38.
• Thresholds. The Annex 8 Standards for large aeroplanes apply above 5,700 kg; Annex 13 notification to ICAO applies above 2,250 kg and the final report above 5,700 kg.
• What ICAO does not do. It issues no licences, certifies no aircraft and sets no crew blood-alcohol limit; States do.
• The newest. Annex 19, Safety Management, adopted in 2013, is the nineteenth; questions that speak of eighteen Annexes predate it.

Library articles are written for study and exam preparation. They do not replace your aircraft's approved documentation, your operator's procedures or the regulations themselves.