Country Codes
Country Codes
The Passenger Manifests for MH370 include the passenger nationality in the format of a Country Code. The version distributed at Beijing on Saturday, 8 March 2014 clearly shows three-letter codes which represent the country. In the first two versions of a Passenger Manifest released by Malaysia Airlines on 8 March 2014 and updated on 10 April 2014 the country code has been converted to a country name for easy reading. Initially, there was some confusion between the codes IDN (India) and IND (Indonesia). This article explains where the standard abbreviations come from and lists the country codes for each nationality represented by passengers on flight MH370.
ISO 3166
The International Standards Organisation (ISO) developed a Standard (ISO 3166) which lists all of the countries by name in both English and French. A two-letter code (Alpha-2), and a three-letter code (Alpha-3) are assigned to each country. Additionally there is a three-digit (Numeric) code for each country.
These codes can be viewed via the ISO's Online Browsing Platform https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search
Country Codes for Passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370
| Code | Country | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| AUS | Australia | |
| AUT | Austria | Passenger was impersonated by an Iranian |
| CAN | Canada | |
| CHN | China | |
| FRA | France | |
| IND | India | |
| IDN | Indonesia | |
| IRN | Iran | Two passengers using stolen Passports |
| ITA | Italy | Passenger was impersonated by an Iranian |
| MYS | Malaysia | |
| NLD | Netherlands | |
| NZL | New Zealand | |
| RUS | Russia | The Passenger Seating Plan (1 May 2014) incorrectly uses the Alpha-2 code RU The API Data in the Beijing version (8 March 2014) shows RUS. |
| TWN | Taiwan | |
| UKR | Ukraine | |
| USA | United States of America |
Two-letter (Alpha-2) Country Codes
A list of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes is provided in a Wikipedia article ISO 3166-1 alpha-2.
Country Code 60
An event at 0239:52 MYT is described as "Ground-to-air telephony call placed from a number with country code 60 (Malaysia)".
The Country Code referred to is the telephone code for Malaysia.
Details are provided by the website countrycode.org on the page https://countrycode.org/malaysia.
Other Sources
Country Codes from ISO 3166 are used by many organisations worldwide. Here are just two examples:-
- IBAN Codes. These are the country codes used as part of an International Bank Account Number (IBAN). The IBAN website lists these country codes here:-
https://www.iban.com/country-codes. - Freight Tracking. FedEx uses the ISO 3166 country codes as listed on this webpage: http://www.fedex.com/mv/tracking/codes.html
- Telephone country codes - see https://countrycode.org