Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Airlines are running out of 4-digit flight numbers

viewfromthewing.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 461 posts

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

#361

Post by [deleted] »

vel0city wrote: post #334
crmd wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real talk. I’ve been working in tech for 20 years, am coming off a year-long sabbatical, and for the past couple of months have been struggling with the feeling that the joy is gone and I should consider a radical career change. Reading (what feels to me as) the aggressive pedantry of parent commenter in this thread is giving me a straight up anxiety attack. I’m not sure I have it in me anymore to be in meetings with…

If someone says, "Tom Hanks played Jon Snow in Game of Thrones", and then you reply "that's incorrect, it was Kit Harrington", and then people say "well it's really Tom Hank's cousin that played him", which is still incorrect , is it aggressive pedantry to point out that's still wrong? IP addresses are not globally unique. IP:PORT is not globally unique. Kit Harrington played Jon Snow in the HBO series Game of Throne…

[deleted]

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

#363

Post by lisper »

ryukoposting wrote: post #259
jll29 wrote: post #227

> Here’s the full answer, along with how they triage the problem – for instance by assigning the same flight number to more than one flight a day (although that means they need for it to be flights that would never both be in the air at the same time, such as where the same plane is used and can’t reasonably be substituted) This sounds like it's calling for trouble! Whenever I hear that any IDs could be "recycled", I…

I'm certain each flight has its own completely unique ID buried somewhere in a database. But, shorter codes can be spoken into a radio faster and with lower probability of misinterpretation - both critical features for air traffic control. Those shorter codes will necessarily be reused, it's just a question of the time interval between re-uses of any particular code. I faintly recall seeing two Southwest flights from…

> Flight 1555 from ORD to BWI departs at 4PM today, and flight 1555 from ORD to BWI departs at 4:20PM tomorrow.

Why do you find that remarkable? That's just the same flight departing at slightly different times on two different days.

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

#364

Post by notfed »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #282
gentle wrote: post #83

I love that so many people here think they can think about the problem for 10 seconds and come up with a solution that hasn't already been considered a thousand times and discarded.

Obviously, the solution is a blockchain and matching cryptocurrency where miners can generate flight IDs which the operators can then buy off of an exchange. I've already pre-mined all convenient and vanity flight IDs for a smooth launch, each ID will be sold at an automated blockchain auction with prices starting at $1000 each. IDs cannot be reused.

Aaaaaaand it's gone.

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

#366

Post by vel0city »

nottorp wrote: post #326
vel0city wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you set up complex ipv6 networks at work? Your standard was "It's unusable on your fucking home network." I've set up and managed IPv6 at work before, yes. I don't know if I'd call them "complex" networks though. Either way I set it up at home several years before. And I had been running IPv6 at home before I even bothered setting it up in a way I wanted, as my ISP's box previously had a decently competent SLAAC…

> As for this disdain of running such complicated systems like "DNS" Disdain? I run a few bind instances for my own domains. On rented servers where they belong. I'm just opposed to having one required for my local network. > https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/nat/npt.html "NPt makes perfect sense for SOHO IPv6 Multi-WAN deployments." Wait, they agree with me. That there are SOHO IPv6 Multi-WAN deployments. W…

> "NPt makes perfect sense for SOHO IPv6 Multi-WAN deployments." Wait, they agree with me.

Well yeah, without implementing BGP and controlling your public prefixes its the only way to have multi-WAN deployments, and chances are home users aren't messing with BGP. Most users will get by fine just adopting their WAN-issued prefixes.

> I don't think any of my internets has failed since like 2010... mostly keeping them out of inertia.

So next time you do some big network maintenance just drop your redundant WAN connection, sounds like you haven't really needed it in 14 years (imagine the thousands of dollars you'll save not keeping it another decade and a half!). Just adopt whatever public prefix you have, and life will be simple.

> Your answers are almost devoid of acronyms and "helper" services

Largely because there aren't really many "helper" services needed if you're willing to adopt some pretty basic network designs. Add DNS/mDNS, and suddenly you don't need to care about the specific numbers of things. Just accept SLAAC, which comes with any Linux/BSD distro/MacOS/Windows/whatever IPv6 embedded stack you've got comes out of the box for the last decade+, and suddenly you'll get publicly routable IP addresses. If you want to access SSH on a box, add a firewall rule for its IP and register its IP in a public DNS, and suddenly its accessible anywhere. You can make any host in your network accessible if you want to. Its nice.

> This was not my opinion of ipv6 before. Maybe I'll give it a chance in the future.

I get there's a lot of new acronyms with it digging deep in docs. I get it sounds like there's a million ways to deploy it. There's a lot to know, if you want to get deep in it. Honestly, if you just kind of loosen your reins a little bit, accept the things that are already shipping on the things you've been running for a decade will just work with the newer dynamic stuff, and adopt DNS, it'll probably be perfectly fine. You probably don't need to install/configure dozens of additional things.

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

#367

Post by jki275 »

pixl97 wrote: post #324
jki275 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-mi…

And there is so much functional testing that needs to occur on systems boundaries. I'm just thinking of crazy things that happen often enough like luggage getting put on the wrong flight and shipped via another carrier via agreement.

I can start to wrap my head around it a little bit, and if I were handed this task I'd run away screaming.

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

#368

Post by burnte »

jll29 wrote: post #227

> Here’s the full answer, along with how they triage the problem – for instance by assigning the same flight number to more than one flight a day (although that means they need for it to be flights that would never both be in the air at the same time, such as where the same plane is used and can’t reasonably be substituted) This sounds like it's calling for trouble! Whenever I hear that any IDs could be "recycled", I…

> Whenever I hear that any IDs could be "recycled", I make a mental note to replace the person making such a proposal from all teams that I am involved in.

There's an EMR/EHR we use at my employer that reuses UUIDs. If an appointment is moved/rescheduled, the UUID is reused for that appointment meaning the UUID is no longer UU. It causes major issues with other apps that interact with the EMR/EHR, to the point we have to educate users to cancel and create new rather than rescheduling appointments.

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

#369

Post by nottorp »

vel0city wrote: post #358
nottorp wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes actually. Think multiple machine home office because i WFH, not consumer "just netflix terminals, 3 phones and a console".

Lots of machines at home and yet having DNS tied to DHCP or running mDNS is too much of a hassle. I would hate to have to remember even the last octet of all my machines in my house. Instead it's just the simple names. The numbers underneath can all change whenever, it doesn't matter. Until I start calling my kids by an octet a name will be easier to remember instead of "is that north camera 101 or 105 or 113 or..."…

> Lots of machines at home and yet having DNS tied to DHCP or running mDNS is too much of a hassle.

Yes. I have no problem remembering the numbers. Illegal?

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

#370

Post by vel0city »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #257
jll29 wrote: post #227

> Here’s the full answer, along with how they triage the problem – for instance by assigning the same flight number to more than one flight a day (although that means they need for it to be flights that would never both be in the air at the same time, such as where the same plane is used and can’t reasonably be substituted) This sounds like it's calling for trouble! Whenever I hear that any IDs could be "recycled", I…

Isn't this what Southwest essentially does? I've been on a Southwest flight that makes four or five stops, all with the same number. But I'm sure no person took more than one stop on the same plane.

No, that's still one flight path just with several stops. So there's not more than one plane in the air with the same number. There's a difference between a flight "continuing on" and an entirely different flight plan. And I dunno, there's probably some percentage of riders who might continue on past a single stop. It's not impossible.

For example:

https://www.southwest.com/air/flight-status/path.html?depart...

There won't also be a SW981 today that say takes off from HOU to OKC.

Post reply on HN