On: Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers

[jbandela1]

> Except they don’t. American Airlines, Delta, and United are running out of flight numbers, and nobody knows what to do about it.

All of the above mentioned airlines are the size they are because of mergers.

Why don’t they use the IATA codes of the airlines they absorbed. For example Delta merged with Northwestern. In addition to DL, they could also use NW. American merged with USAirways. They could use US in addition to AA. United merged with Continental. They could use CO in addition to UA.

[Dalewyn → jbandela1]

>For example Delta merged with Northwestern.

Northwest Airlines.

I'm sorry if I'm pedantic, but Northwest was my childhood airline flying with my dad on many of his business travels and I have many fond memories with them. My Delta SkyMiles account hails from Northwest WorldPerks, opened in 1998!

I might also have a soft spot for Delta because of that too.

[pavlov → Dalewyn]

Also immortalized in the Hitchcock classic movie "North by Northwest".

[DidYaWipe → Dalewyn]

AKA Northworst.

[lxgr → jbandela1]

I could imagine many legacy systems identifying “their” flights based on the alphanumeric prefix alone (as opposed to doing a database lookup).

[globular-toast → lxgr]

Yep. Not only a ton of software would make this assumption, but a ton of human-based processes too.

Lesson: if you make your IDs easily decodable, people will decode them and use them directly instead of whatever API you intended them to use.

[Schiendelman → globular-toast]

That's what happens with requisition numbers for jobs! If they're too short (12345), recruiters remember them, start building manual processes dependent on them, and then when they collide with others on a job board (like Indeed, or if the employer hires an agency to help) you end up needing a parallel identifier...

[lxgr → globular-toast]

According to Hyrum's law, this is an API :)

[nradov → jbandela1]

That would be a recipe for confusion among pilots and controllers. They rely on visual sighting of aircraft for some operations and have to maneuver in relation to each other so if the livery doesn't match the IATA code then that increases the risk of error.

[mlyle → nradov]

Here we are talking about running out of codes due to codeshares; the planes do not identify themselves this way.

But, similar reasons: mixing branding is going to cause confusion (codeshares already do this enough without injecting a “third” airline into the mix).

[petesergeant → nradov]

All the baby AirAsias have virtually identical livery with different codes (FD, QZ, Z2), doesn't seem to be an issue

[bux93 → petesergeant]

Since their fleets are based from different home airports, the inflight meal selection is different for FD/QZ/Z2. So, it actually comes in handy for passengers; no surprises.

[CPLX → nradov]

That’s not really true. The regional carriers like Republic and so on have had a variety of different paint jobs (United Express, American Eagle) and it hasn’t been considered an issue. Not to mention the issue of random call signs like Brickyard and so on.

And regardless of that we’re talking about codeshares anyways.