lateral thinking - A pilot's messages

A friend of mine works as a pilot, so he travels a lot and I don't see him that often. But every year around the same time he sends me a message. He has been doing that ever since 1997.
Here is a list of all the messages he sent:

1997: 0.6 - LAFRBRAV - Kg
1998: 1.8 - BVOHOTXY - Is
1999: 5.8 - JULITTROMOIRRA - wdn
2000: 2.6 - LFOOOVB - Dk

2001: 2.4 - CHRLPPHL - sn
2002: 5.0 - NGOMM - v
2003: 4.8 - OMOINDIAXA - Tuk
2004: 3.0 - DSTGO - Uk
2005: 4.2 - INDIAHOVITO - G
2006: 4.0 - TGOHOTE - id
2007: 2.4 - HOTLCHOLM - Srb
2008: 4.8 - BVOECHOGOLF - ussi
2009: 3.2 - DELTMIKEECH - Nrwy
2010: 5.8 - OSCSILI - Gny

2011: 2.8 - DLTUFOMS - zbj
2012: 5.2 - GOLFYAKLTA - Sw
2013: 3.6 - IIXY - Dn
2014: 2.0 - CHLEPPHOEL - us
2015: 4.6 - VICTORIIACHO - Sw
2016: ???

Unfortunately I lost last year's message. Can you help me figure out what it was?

Note: a good starting point for this is to try and make sense out of the other messages.

Answer

Two things jumped out at me as soon as I saw this puzzle.

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  Firstly, the mixed-case letter strings on the far right. Several of them look like

  
  

  
  

  country names with certain letters removed. For instance, Srb -> Serbia, ussi -> Russia, and Nrwy -> Norway.

  
  

  
  


• 
  

  Secondly, the all-caps letter strings in the middle. Several of them start with what look like

  
  
  

  
  

  words from the NATO IACO phonetic alphabet. Reading down, we can immediately spot JULI(E)T, INDIA, HOT(E)L, DELT(A), GOLF, VICTOR.

  
  

  
  

Looking at it a little more closely, I noticed that

the letters missing from the country names seem to be identical in each line to the letters removed from the NATO IACO phonetic alphabet words.

So let's fill in some of those letters and see where we get:

1997: 0.6 - DELTA / UNIFORM / BRAVO - United Kingdom
1998: 1.8 - BRAVO / HOTEL / XRAY - Israel
1999: 5.8 - JULIETT / ROMEO / SIERRA - Sweden
2000: 2.6 - ALFA / ROMEO / NOVEMBER - Denmark
2001: 2.4 - CHARLIE / PAPA / HOTEL - Estonia
2002: 5.0 - TANGO / LIMA / LIMA - Latvia
2003: 4.8 - ROMEO / INDIA / XRAY - Turkey
2004: 3.0 - INDIA / SIERRA / TANGO - Ukraine
2005: 4.2 - INDIA / ECHO / VICTOR - Greece

2006: 4.0 - ALFA / TANGO / HOTEL - Finland
2007: 2.4 - HOTEL / ECHO / LIMA - Serbia
2008: 4.8 - BRAVO / ECHO / GOLF - Russia
2009: 3.2 - DELTA / MIKE / ECHO - Norway
2010: 5.8 - OSCAR / SIERRA / LIMA - Germany
2011: 2.8 - DELTA / UNIFORM / SIERRA - Azerbaijan
2012: 5.2 - GOLF / YANKE / DELTA - Sweden
2013: 3.6 - MIKE / MIKE / XRAY - Denmark
2014: 2.0 - CHARLIE/PAPA/HOTEL - Austria
2015: 4.6 - VICTOR / INDIA / ECHO - Sweden

On each line, the all-caps part deciphers to

three letters, which together with the context of the message suggests airport codes.

Furthermore,

the airport given by this three-letter code is in the country given by the right-most part of the previous line! For instance, in 2008, BEG is Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade, Serbia - the country mentioned in 2007.

Having noticed this connection, I actually used it quite a lot to help me find some of the missing letters to reconstruct the above.

So now we have the following list of airports:

Dublin (DUB), Ireland
Birmingham (BHX), United Kingdom
Atarot (JRS), Israel (Palestine?)
Stockholm Arlanda (ARN), Sweden
Copenhagen (CPH), Denmark
Tallinn (TLL), Estonia Riga International (RIX), Latvia
Istanbul Ataturk (IST), Turkey
Kiev International (IEV), Ukraine

Athens International (ATH), Greece
Helsinki (HEL), Finland
Belgrade Nikola Tesla (BEG), Serbia
Domodedovo International (DME), Russia
Oslo Gardermoen (OSL), Norway
Dusseldorf (DUS), Germany
Heydar Aliyev International (GYD), Azerbaijan
Malmo (MMX), Sweden
Copenhagen (CPH), Denmark
Vienna International (VIE), Austria

Thanks to Sconibulus, these correspond to

the locations of the Eurovision Song Contests in the respective years. (This explains why the airport in one line matches the country in the previous line - because each year's winner becomes the next year's host.)

Looking at the linked table, we can now spot that the number on the far left of each line in the puzzle corresponds to

the date of the ESC (you did mention that the messages come "every year around the same time"). E.g. for 2010, the number 5.8 equals 29/5 and the ESC was on the 29th of May.

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So in the row for each year, we have

the date, location, and winner of that year's Eurovision Song Contest (the date encoded by simply treating the slash as division; the location encoded by an airport IATA code in the IACO phonetic alphabet, and the location and winner encoded by removing their common letters).

And the final answer is

2016: 2.8 - LFOMOOVMB - Uki, because the 2016 ESC was held on 14/5 in Stockholm and won by Ukraine, giving "ALFA/ROMEO/NOVEMBER - Ukraine", from which we remove the letters R, A, N, and E (thanks to Henning Makholm for realising that the letters removed are precisely the ones found in both strings).