Two American Airlines jets with exactly the same callsign ended up on the same air traffic control frequency, basically flying toward one another. This is very odd, and one wonders how exactly this happened (thanks to Hans for flagging this). [...]
This discussion thread is connected to our post: Two American Planes With Same Callsign End Up On Same Frequency, Heading Straight For One Another.
Too many airplanes , too much everything ; cut back 50% to a reasonable amount .
Surprised there's not a FAA regulation that doesn't allow two call signs for the same airline in air at the same time. For this reason.
Agreed. I wonder how they even differentiate internally at AA: things like fuel supply, catering, etc, even post-flight incident reports (in case there's an emergency that needs extra reporting after the fact) or baggage handling. This could go disastrously wrong.
given that airlines are running out of flight numbers due to codesharing, it is common for an inbound and outbound leg of a flight to use the same flight number.
it is the airline's responsibility to file a different flight number even if, as Ben notes, adding a letter to one of them
someone at AA didn't realize the inbound would not be on the ground by the time the outbound departed and they apparently do not have automated systems to warn them if this does happen.
Shouldn’t ATC auto-reject the flight plan if there’s a duplicate call sign? I was on a UA flight where they had to use a different flight number for ATC for this reason.
Im certain this has happened before. Either
1. A-B-C has the same number. This is more common with southwest but I was in such a flight on AA thru PHX.
2. Back and forth hub/ spoke flights. Ive been on there before.
On #1 I can see a delayed flight get split up. The first flight is delayed but separate one starts on time. Usually they arent in the same airspace.
I was on a east coast-PHX-west coast flight. Both legs had the same number but they did an equip change in phx so we had to leave the plane with crew escorts to the new plane
This thing has been much more common in southwest. Like I was on a flight thru Denver as a stop then onto next airport. My flight was delayed getting inyo denver then they flipped planes si I missed connection
Sometimes airlines can under #2 cancel the flight, then rebook everyone on a different flight number newly created.
I've never seen the same callsign used both directions in Europe where I fly often and Asia where I sometimes fly. Perhaps it's an American thing or I've just never seen it.
Even as a consumer I find it confusing when the same flight number is used for both directions. There are an unlimited number of numbers. Why can't each flight have a unique flight number? Then this kind of thing wouldn't happen.
I think American surprised everyone (including themselves) when one of their flights was almost on time.
I never understood the point of using the same flight number for outbound and return flights. I mean, there is an infinite supply of numbers. It's not as if the airline is going to run out! So why conserve them?
I suspect the problem might be that flight numbers are limited to 4 digits, which does impose a limit of 10,000 numbers. But the way around that is to get the systems changed to accommodate bigger numbers. In this age of huge airlines with thousands of flights daily, that makes a lot of sense anyway.
This practice of using the flightnumber for two (or more) flights is only known in the USA. Everywhere else, flightnumbers are unique. And callsigns are even more unique, because they are usually not identical with flight numbers and include a combination of numbers and letters, e.g., IB785 has the call sign IBE07WR.
Wonder how many people will now swear that they will never fly Americal Airlines again.
Never understood the value of using the same flight number for 2 routes -- regardless of timing.
Airlines will do this often times with the flight going back and forth in 2 directions.
WHY -- are we running out of numbers in the world?
Laziness on AA's part. Their ops need to improve
I knew airlines did this all the time, for example if the same plane is flying LGA-MSY-LGA, both flights have the same flight number. The FAA should create a rule so that, in an instance where the 1st flight is delayed and the return gets assigned to a new aircraft, it automatically gets a new flight number.
The commercial systems (or at least, Amadeus) usually don't allow for the same flight number to be used for two different flights on the same day. For this reason, an operational suffix (as you say Ben, it's one letter appended to the flight number) is added to at least one of the flights.
AA doesn't use Amadeus, but I'm surprised Sabre allows that, I would have expected one of the two flights to have an operational suffix.
I don't know if the operational suffix is automatically part of the call sign, but it would be a good idea to make sure it is.
Why not just give every flight a unique flight number? It is not like this is a continuation or anything. There is no logical reason why these flight numbers need to be the same. Seems like it would keep things much simpler.
Because there's an issue right now with very large airlines running out of flight numbers. United and American are both in this boat, due to designating certain flight numbers for certain tasks like regionals, code shares, etc. There are only 9999 numbers and a lot of special cases.
Aircraft have transponder codes that would have been unique in this case. They also have mode S which identify the individual aircraft regardless of what you set the transponder to. While this is a fun story it is just that.
But the transponder code isn't what displays next to the flight's blip on the controllers screen. The system does a lookup, sees that transponder code xxxx is assigned to AAL2482, thus displays AAL2482 next to the blip. Ditto for the blip of the flight assigned transponder code yyyy.
What was the gender of the pilots?
That is what everybody is thinking.
I used to work DFW Ops for legacy AA many years ago.
The Dispatcher for the PHX-ORD should've "stubbed" that flight.
In the Reservation system, nothing changes. But in the Flight Planning System (and thus the Flight Plan sent to ATC) the flight number would be altered.
A 3 digit flight number would simply have a "P" (pronounced "Papa") suffix added
The system (both AA's and ATC/FAA) can't handle more than 4 characters. So on a 4 digit number, the 1st digit gets dropped. 2482 stubbed would be 482P.
Double/triple subs can happen. The next letters used are (I think) Romeo & Sierra.
The concept for a "stub" was originally for a flight passing thru a hub, back in the days when flights were actually scheduled "thru". The inbound would be late but the hub has a spare plane so the outbound could depart on-time as a stub. Now that flight number philosophy has changed (the number doesn't go 'thru' a hub anymore, it's '"out & back", on return, the plane will go thru the hub but changes flight numbers), stub really apply more at a spoke than the hub.
I think that "stubs are now at the spoke instead of the hub" concept is what tripped the Dispatcher. While PHX is a hub, operationally for flight 2482, ORD is the hub and PHX is the spoke. If the original reason for the plane swap wasn't due to the inbound being late AND the Dispatcher was thinking of PHX as a hub, the he/she wouldn't be tracking the inbound plane thus not realizing it had lost time.
Having said that, I can't believe neither AA nor FAA's system wew able to catch this scenario developing.
Why is it allowed to have two planes with the same callsign in the air at the same time? Mind you, callsign doesn't need to equal flight number. Over here in Europe, it's quite normal for a flight to use a callsign different from its number when needed to e.g. avoid similar callsigns.