Two American Airlines Flights End Up with the Same Flight Numbers
aviationa2z.com42 points by samch 3 hours ago
42 points by samch 3 hours ago
It's even worse than just the same flight number. Both were at PHX, one landing, one taking off at the same time. Kudos to a clever ATC for preventing what could've been a catastrophe: https://youtu.be/93lLXNsWp9Q
The YouTube video you link to is actually about a separate incident from the one described in the article. The video is about an incident involving two AAL2482s near Phoenix; the article is about an incident involving two AA5083s near Providence.
It's the same idea though; one was inbound, the other outbound, and ATC had to distinguish between the two.
[edit: Corrected locations.]
The probability of it becoming a catastrophe was infinitesimally low with the existence of TCAS.
Falsehoods airlines believe about flight numbers.
Iirc, AA/Sabre knows that a flight identifier is actually carrier+flight number+origin airport+departure date.
But who all calls someone by their full name all the time??
> American assigns the same flight number to the outbound and return services, with the same aircraft typically operating both legs.
So they could just not do that.
I'd like to hear more from someone in the industry about the resolution to this problem. As I understand it, we're trading a small non-zero risk of mistaken identity for the streamlined communication of using four digits rather than five (which carries its own non-zero benefit to safety). This has become a problem because airline consolidation means some of them operate so many flights per day that their limited pool of numbers dictate that they reuse them for either direction.
Could we resolve this by swapping one number for a letter? 26 options instead of 10 raises the pool substantially. Letters A-J indicate inbound, K-Z outbound? Or westbound/eastbound.
Alphanumeic call signs are already used around the world [0], it's just that the US (like many other aviation fields) is behind the times.
[0] https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/aviation-explainer-series...
The format is SSIM defined by IATA - the international association of transport airlines. It specifies two letter airline code followed by four digit flight.
I'm sure various ATC systems also assume this.
Changing it would be an industry-wide effort.
(This is from August 19, it was widely reported at the time.)
Two planes, the same airport, crossing paths.
Root cause:
> American assigns the same flight number to the outbound and return services, with the same aircraft typically operating both legs.
Other airlines don’t do this, and instead assign a different flight number to the return flight.
Alaska does the same too. Especially with their shorter flights, you might have more than 2 of the same flight per day.
Sound like that would be absolute pain if not for customer anyone who just got flight number and wanted to track the process. Or at least I took that as having multiple flights leaving at different times during the day... Couldn't you even have different flights departing at same time with same number in weirdest case?
"Hey ChatGPT, could you find me a suitable number for this flight?"
What amazes me is that their software has never been updated to support flight numbers longer than 4 digits.
Given how long humans have had to implement or fix the most basic of shit (some major apps with millions of users still don't have a Dark Mode, for example) maybe handing the reigns to AI is for the better after all..
Certainly couldn't get any worse, I mean
(I am not AI)