system
June 23, 1999, 11:07pm
1
Hello all -
This is my first post. Quite exciting.
I took my wife to the airport this morning. In order to waste some time, I read the flight numbers on the big blue screen. I just couldn’t find and pattern or reason for them. Some had three numbers - some four. The bigger planes seemed to have only three. (My big discovery)
So - is there any reason, other than random numbers for tracking, for choosing what flight gets what number?
Joe
system
June 23, 1999, 11:30pm
2
I found this at:http://olias.arc.nasa.gov/ASRS/dl8_callsign.htm
The FAA does not assign the flight numbers used by most air carriers and commuters. If it did take on this task, it would probably have as much difficulty as the air carriers themselves. Assignment of flight numbers is typically a function of an airline’s marketing department. Sometimes it appears that Marketing chooses the quickest, easiest method of assigning numbers to newly-created flights. Consequently, some flight numbers have only one number that is different, some have numbers that are transposed, some just happen to sound similar, even though they may contain few, if any, of the same numbers. This problem appears to be increasing, as airline mergers and buyouts have led to operators blending flights under the same carrier name, but with a decreasing pool of available flight numbers.
For example, air carrier A buys commuter B and gains 30 new flights per day. The easiest way to assign flight numbers is to take a block of unused numbers, say, 4101-4130, and assign those numbers in order of departure time. Often odd numbers are assigned to one compass direction, and even numbers assigned to the opposite direction. This can apply to North-South flights and to East-West flights. So, for our fictitious air carrier A, SFO-PDX flights could be 4101, 4103, 4105, etc., and PDX-SFO flights could be 4102, 4104, 4106, etc. If air carrier C, which may also have undergone mergers, also has flights to and from PDX or SEA at approximately the same times using the same or similar block of numbers, there is a potential for major confusion while these aircraft are sharing the same airspace.
If it is indeed left to airline marketing departments, there will absolutely be NO rhyme or reason to flight numbers!