Airlines Are Running Out of Flight Numbers, and They Don't Know What to Do

Re:Airlines Are Running Out of Flight Numbers, and They Don'... by madcaptenor on Monday August 05, 2024 @11:40AM (#41162373)

Short flights out-and-back from a hub can have the same number on the two legs. An example is AA 1992, which today departs PHL 3:06 PM, arrives ATL 5:17 PM, departs ATL 5:57 PM, arrives back at PHL 8:05 PM. (All times US Eastern.)

My mother recently had an itinerary where both her flights were this flight - the PHL-ATL leg on a Sunday and the ATL-PHL leg on the following Saturday.

(It looks like as of Tuesday AA 1992 becomes a DFW-SEA-DFW flight, but it's the same sort of thing.)

I figure this isn't a problem as long as the two legs are flown by the same plane. But what if the PHL-ATL flight were delayed and American decided to fly the ATL-PHL flight as scheduled with a different plane (say because lots of people booked on that flight had connections at PHL?) That seems like it could create trouble.

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Re:Airlines Are Running Out of Flight Numbers, and They Don'... by zwily on Monday August 05, 2024 @01:24PM (#41163357)

I recently flew SLC-CLT and CLT-SLC, and both flights were DL2070.

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Re:Airlines Are Running Out of Flight Numbers, and They Don'... by madcaptenor on Monday August 05, 2024 @01:43PM (#41163518)

I've also seen this on Delta on ATL-PHL. I had guessed it was limited to relatively short flights - because why waste a number on a short flight, and because there's less room for irregularity where you end up with both flights in the air at the same time - but it looks like at least SLC-CLT on Delta and DFW-SEA on American do it.

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Re:Airlines Are Running Out of Flight Numbers, and They Don'... by zrobotics on Monday August 05, 2024 @02:02PM (#41163699)

If they had to switch to a new plane, wouldn't they also need to refile the flight plan? From what I understand that would be the case, so either a new number would be assigned or the details would be updated in the system. I'm not a pilot, I know a few instrument rated pilots but they're private, not commercial so this may not be the case.

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Re:Airlines Are Running Out of Flight Numbers, and They Don'... by Idiot211 on Tuesday August 06, 2024 @12:00PM (#41172146)

To be fair, this problem is semi-solved by European airlines by having callsigns like BAW44W.

Which uses the last 2 numbers of the flight number, and an alphabetical character. BA use this on a lot of transatlantic type flights where delays etc can be an issue.

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Re:Airlines Are Running Out of Flight Numbers, and They Don'... by ryukoposting on Saturday August 17, 2024 @08:12AM (#41273929)

> But what if the PHL-ATL flight were delayed and American decided to fly the ATL-PHL flight as scheduled with a different plane

Unless the PHL-ATL flight is more than 40 minutes late, I don't think you'd necessarily have two planes moving through air traffic control with the same code at the same time. While the PHL-ATL flight lands and goes to its terminal, the ATL-PHL plane can be boarded, cargo can be loaded, and such. If PHL-ATL is less than 40 minutes late, you wouldn't even cause a delay for the ATL-PHL flight.

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