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Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers

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

#31

Post by netsharc »

poikroequ wrote: post #22
MeteorMarc wrote: post #3

Give the flights a 128 bit number, so we can give each grain of sand on Earth its own flight number.

I'm pretty sure they want to keep flight numbers short because that's how passengers identify their flight. As a passenger, you wouldn't want to be reading signs with 40 digit flight numbers. Attention passengers, flight 3467548742468759027225995322800483168368 to Dallas is now boarding.

Haha, UUIDs for flights.. that'd be obnoxious.

Maybe use QR-Codes to store/display the UUIDs, and everyone should walk around with Apple helmets (what are they called?) that scan these codes as you walk around in the airport... (Facetious idea)

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

#32

Post by gumby »

Havoc wrote: post #11

The entire aviation industry feels like it is in need of a tech stack 100% rebuild. Systems like Sabre are 60+ years old.

Enormous path dependance.

There's a photo in that article that shows the problem: the flip-tab sign that has space for four numerical digits. I was thinking they could just switch from 0-9 to 0-9A-Z but that photo showed why that would be a disaster.

Plus any solution has to be approved for use worldwide.

Fortunately the two-digit IATA codes have already switched to 0-9A-Z (e.g. JetBlue is B6) so allowing constrained airlines to use two codes should work fine.

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

#34

Post by missedthecue »

growse wrote: post #12
gruez wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is probably the best case scenario for high speed trains. They have high population density to support train networks, virtually no opposition from NIMBYs, and low construction costs. Yet high speed trains there operate at a loss[1], and airplanes are still competitive there. If high speed rail doesn't work there, how could you seriously claim we should switch all air travel to high speed rail? [1] https://en.w…

Why does it matter that they operate at a loss? Does China subsidise its air industry like other countries (jet fuel is duty free in the UK)

Because if they aren't, they are unsustainable. It's good to have self-sustainable industries rather than endless businesses (state owned or not) forever sucking on the public teet.

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

#35

Post by mrinfinitiesx »

warkdarrior wrote: post #7
dataflow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Easy solution: Pivot your entire business to high speed rail so we can continue to live on this planet. > Air travel should be for medical emergencies only. Some nuance would be nice here. Although high-speed rail from Hawaii to Australia would be a blast.

Hawaii to Australia will use a high-speed sailboat.

Currently in Hawaii. Surfs up bruh. Mahalo.

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

#36

Post by missedthecue »

anonfordays wrote: post #9
gruez wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is probably the best case scenario for high speed trains. They have high population density to support train networks, virtually no opposition from NIMBYs, and low construction costs. Yet high speed trains there operate at a loss[1], and airplanes are still competitive there. If high speed rail doesn't work there, how could you seriously claim we should switch all air travel to high speed rail? [1] https://en.w…

Is the concept of NIMBY even possible in China considering the state owns the land?

Do people in the US truly own their land? In China, you lease your land from the state for up to 70 years at a time, and the leases are based on the land value. It's functionally a land value tax by another name.

But that doesn't mean Chinese people have zero rights with regard to the land they lease.

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

#37

Post by karmakaze »

netsharc wrote: post #31
poikroequ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure they want to keep flight numbers short because that's how passengers identify their flight. As a passenger, you wouldn't want to be reading signs with 40 digit flight numbers. Attention passengers, flight 3467548742468759027225995322800483168368 to Dallas is now boarding.

Haha, UUIDs for flights.. that'd be obnoxious. Maybe use QR-Codes to store/display the UUIDs, and everyone should walk around with Apple helmets (what are they called?) that scan these codes as you walk around in the airport... (Facetious idea)

IPv6 format could at least abbreviate.

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

#39

Post by RiverCrochet »

karmakaze wrote: post #37
netsharc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, UUIDs for flights.. that'd be obnoxious. Maybe use QR-Codes to store/display the UUIDs, and everyone should walk around with Apple helmets (what are they called?) that scan these codes as you walk around in the airport... (Facetious idea)

IPv6 format could at least abbreviate.

::1 is you entering then leaving the terminal immediately.

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

#40

Post by jki275 »

maxsilver wrote: post #23

Wouldn't the easy solution be to use two sets of letters for IATA coded flights for the same airline? Something like "DL1234" and "DZ1234" for Delta? I know a lot of the two-letter codes are claimed too, and I'm sure there must be some reason this wouldn't work OK, but it would seem like they they would each have at least one code left over from the various airlines they've acquired over the years? If an American Air…

It almost certainly would completely break thousands of functions that have those magic letters hard coded into them in fortran, cobol, C or whatever. You might even find that clever people back in the 70s used other ways of representing those letters so you can't even search for them.

I've worked on codebases like this -- I've seen it take a team of engineers years to add a single digit to an ID number in a multi-million LOC mixed language codebase that was written in the 60s.

It's not that it can't be done, it's that it costs millions of dollars and takes years and you're never sure it's actually done because nobody has ever written a single test for the system and if you tried that would take years as well.

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