Two American Airlines Flights End Up with the Same Flight Numbers (aviationa2z.com)
36 points by samch 2 hours ago
kayson 2 hours ago
It's even worse than just the same flight number. Both were at PHX, one landing, one taking off at the same time. Kudos to a clever ATC for preventing what could've been a catastrophe: https://youtu.be/93lLXNsWp9Q
Sophira 2 hours ago
The YouTube video you link to is actually about a separate incident from the one described in the article. The video is about an incident involving two AAL2482s near Phoenix; the article is about an incident involving two AA5083s near Providence.
It's the same idea though; one was inbound, the other outbound, and ATC had to distinguish between the two.
[edit: Corrected locations.]
amelius an hour ago
Falsehoods airlines believe about flight numbers.
BJones12 37 minutes ago
> American assigns the same flight number to the outbound and return services, with the same aircraft typically operating both legs.
So they could just not do that.
expedition32 33 minutes ago
Maybe they ran out of numbers I mean there are only so many...
chneu 17 minutes ago
We need IPv6 for aircraft identification.
Lol
gausswho an hour ago
I'd like to hear more from someone in the industry about the resolution to this problem. As I understand it, we're trading a small non-zero risk of mistaken identity for the streamlined communication of using four digits rather than five (which carries its own non-zero benefit to safety). This has become a problem because airline consolidation means some of them operate so many flights per day that their limited pool of numbers dictate that they reuse them for either direction.
Could we resolve this by swapping one number for a letter? 26 options instead of 10 raises the pool substantially. Letters A-J indicate inbound, K-Z outbound? Or westbound/eastbound.
ycan an hour ago
Alphanumeic call signs are already used around the world [0], it's just that the US (like many other aviation fields) is behind the times.
[0] https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/aviation-explainer-series...
xenadu02 an hour ago
The format is SSIM defined by IATA - the international association of transport airlines. It specifies two letter airline code followed by four digit flight.
I'm sure various ATC systems also assume this.
Changing it would be an industry-wide effort.
dmazzoni 2 hours ago
(This is from August 19, it was widely reported at the time.)
samch 2 hours ago
Two planes, the same airport, crossing paths.
stackghost an hour ago
Root cause:
> American assigns the same flight number to the outbound and return services, with the same aircraft typically operating both legs.
Other airlines don’t do this, and instead assign a different flight number to the return flight.
genocidicbunny 15 minutes ago
Alaska does the same too. Especially with their shorter flights, you might have more than 2 of the same flight per day.
Ekaros 12 minutes ago
Sound like that would be absolute pain if not for customer anyone who just got flight number and wanted to track the process. Or at least I took that as having multiple flights leaving at different times during the day... Couldn't you even have different flights departing at same time with same number in weirdest case?
ranger_danger an hour ago
What amazes me is that their software has never been updated to support flight numbers longer than 4 digits.
gspr 10 minutes ago
Europe for one have used alphanumeric flight numbers for years.
amelius an hour ago
Would not be very convenient to view on a radar screen.
lokar an hour ago
What would the short term ROI on that change be? That’s all they care about.
Razengan an hour ago
Given how long humans have had to implement or fix the most basic of shit (some major apps with millions of users still don't have a Dark Mode, for example) maybe handing the reigns to AI is for the better after all..
Certainly couldn't get any worse, I mean
(I am not AI)
amelius an hour ago
"Hey ChatGPT, could you find me a suitable number for this flight?"