Definition
AUTOVON was the U.S. Department of Defense's worldwide automatic telephone network, used for routine and priority voice communications between military installations. In aviation source material it appears as a contact method listed for certain military airfields, weather services, or flight planning offices.
Plain English
An old military phone system. If you see an AUTOVON number listed in aviation publications, it is a phone line that connects through the military's internal network rather than the regular public phone system.
Context Anchor
Seen in FAA acronym, abbreviation, and NOTAM-contraction lists, especially when decoding older or military-related communication references.
Derivation
Short for 'Automatic Voice Network' — 'auto' meaning the calls were switched automatically (no operator needed), and 'voice network' distinguishing it from teletype or data networks of the same era.
Why Pilots Care
Civilian pilots cannot dial AUTOVON numbers directly. If a published contact is AUTOVON-only, you'll need to find an alternate commercial number or route the request through a military base operator. The system has largely been replaced by the Defense Switched Network (DSN), but the AUTOVON label still appears in older charts and references.
Intuition Check
Do not read AUTOVON as an aviation radio service. Here it means a government voice telephone network.
Example Sentence 1
The base operations contact in the older directory was listed only as an AUTOVON number, so the civilian pilot called the public line instead.
Example Sentence 2
Older flight publications sometimes listed AUTOVON as a contact method for certain restricted airspace approvals.