Yeah, it's like the time the NASDAQ first had more than 65535 tradeable things.
Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers
131–140 of 461 posts
Re: Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers
#132The headline is a bit misleading. Because it's not "airlines" in general, but:
> and it’s really only a problem for three airlines in the world.
Re: Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers
#133I remember my wife was on a charter flight with 3 initial letters many years ago (in Europe). And when I tried to look up the arrival, many systems could not handle the flight number. Now slightly unsure whether I did not dream up the whole episode, I did a web search and found https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/157429/what-is-th... So IATA seems to have formally introduced that in 1994. (Whether they have ab…
It's more likely that the flight in question was using the three letter ICAO code in its passenger facing flight number. I have never known a three character IATA code to be used despite it technically being within the specification.
Re: Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers
#134Can they have another prefix in addition to "AA"?
Re: Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers
#135Too much consolidation? Time to split up them again?
Re: Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers
#136The 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…
> I was thinking they could just switch from 0-9 to 0-9A-Z but that photo showed why that would be a disaster.
I guarantee those signs could easily be updated for that. They’re built to allow replacement of each cell and routinely do so since cells break. Switching to 0-9A-Z would take one night for them.
Re: Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers
#137This is the tipping point that will make the world switch from passenger flights to high-speed rail.
Maybe when a train costs less than an airplane ticket. But right now the train costs more and takes longer. Why would I do that?
Re: Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers
#138They already have a better solution. Did you see AAA777 to Las Vegas. So they are able to add alpha to numerics, when needed. Return flights sharing the number? Why not.
Re: Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers
#139I'm remembering the ISBN switch, which I thought would throw off some older systems—and it probably did, but it took so long to happen that the transition ended up being pretty smooth. The key element was that for a solid ten years or so, every book had both an old-style and a new-style ISBN (and possibly some still do).
I'm hoping that behind the scenes they really are looking at a better plan than just "work around it", but the workaround can buy them time; and if their operations plan is strong, they'll be able to roll it out very slowly in parallel while all their back-end stuff gets upgraded. (This would require some aspect of the new system to make it immediately distinguishable from the old one, e.g. three-letter airlines or whatever, but that's a minor detail compared to all the other stuff they'd have to work out.) Bonus points if knowing the "old" number lets you algorithmically derive the new one somehow, and vice versa, to make the transition period easier. :)
Re: Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers
#140They already have a better solution. Did you see AAA777 to Las Vegas. So they are able to add alpha to numerics, when needed. Return flights sharing the number? Why not.
Are you sure that’s a real flight number, and you’re not confusing it with AAL777 (which would be AA’s ICAO code, AA being IATA)?
I don’t think alphanumeric flight numbers are a thing currently.