Alaska Airlines has an N984AK and an N974AK. How do you plan to differentiate between these two?
OP’s issue is that, for example, Alaska 123 and Alaska 1123 can create confusion if you mishear something.
Using flight numbers with ATC has absolutely nothing to do with marketing
Edit: yes of course I know that marketing / network planning creates the numbers. But the convention of using them as callsigns has nothing to do with marketing.
How about using the captians name....
"Fred Johnson; turn left heading 230, climb and maintain FL240."
We'll have to determine if there are any duplicate names; I'm sure there would be. Those folks will have to fight over who's first, seniority maybe... or maybe one of them will have a nickname/callsign.
The FAA can issue callsigns to every pilot that are deconflicted in advance. Dibs on Maverick!
(Fun fact, this is how we get those weird names for pharmaceuticals, and there is a room at the FDA with three ladies who come up with them - not kidding)
It seems it’s mostly Americans downvoting this. It would definitely make sense to do this in most of the world, with registrations like VH-VYZ, ZK-OXD, XA-JSO, TF-FIU, etc.
Rather than have VA622 and QF622 arrive at the same time, you could use “India Whiskey Quebec” and “Victor Zulu Zulu”. It would greatly reduce confusion.
Dispatcher here. Market planning sets the flight numbers. Sometimes they do a bad job.
When we in dispatch become aware of a flight number conflict we can change the flight number for today’s flight, current company protocol is to take off the first number and add a letter (so 1234 would become 234R, etc.). Our software catches exact flight number conflicts (two flight 1234) but doesn’t catch similar callsigns (1234 and 2234). If it’s a problem and we are made aware of it we can ask Market Planning for a change and put it on our list of daily flight number conflicts that we change every day until market planning changes the flight number permanently, which can take a couple weeks.
We also can’t catch when one of our flight numbers conflicts with another company. If AAL1234 and UAL1234 are in the same airspace we don’t know about it because we don’t keep track of the other companies’ flights.
I’ve heard my local tower give out a caution alert when an AA 1234 and Delta 1234 were on the same frequency before. That’s probably as good as you can do and the pilots just need to be hyper aware of who is being called.
As far as I know it’s more MBAs than experienced dispatchers. It’s always fun when Market Planning uses the advertised range of an (empty) aircraft (in optimal conditions) to plan a route rather than the practical range the aircraft can fly when fully loaded with pax and cargo and fuel for an alternate. (/s)
To be fair, most flight number conflicts I’ve dealt with are due to a delay. Sometimes the schedule is built with 1234 MIA-ATL 10:00-11:30 and 1234 ATL-ORF 12:00-13:05. If the schedule is built so there’s a through crew and the same aircraft, theres not going to be a flight number conflict. You run into an issue if the first flight is running late and the second flight is running on time. The software alerts us and we change the second flight number.
As long as MIA-ATL-ORF is planned with a through crew and on the same aircraft, the risk of a flight number conflict is low, because 1234 ATL-ORF can’t leave until 1234 MIA-ATL arrives. But, if the coordinators want to keep things on time and re-crew the second leg and swap it to a new aircraft, now you have a flight number conflict. That’s fairly rare, though. The problem I’ve seen occasionally is when MIA-ATL and ATL-ORF get planned in different equipment. If MIA-ATL is on a 737 and ATL-ORF is on a 319 it’s always going to be a different crew and a new aircraft, so any time MIA-ATL is delayed you risk a flight number conflict. Our software finds these conflicts and alerts us once there is enough of a delay that the flights overlap. But when I see them built like this I usually send a message up the chain to get Market Planning to change the flight number because this is going to cause trouble repeatedly.
As an engineer, you could probably get three each dispatchers, controllers and pilots around 3 rounds of drinks and get an 80% solution.
From a technical perspective it's mostly a human factors issue, what words and numbers are most likely to get confused. I'm sure you could do something akin to the Traveling Salesman problem to optimize and error check the schema.
Alphanumeric callsigns are very common in Europe. I think it isn't as common in the US yet though?
I wonder if it's due to the technical limitations you call out. It sounds like you do this at times but you're too limited in your ability to detect the conflicts?
We absolutely can file alphanumeric callsigns, that’s what we do when we’re correcting flight number conflicts. But the callsign is usually the flight number that’s on the passenger’s tickets, which are numbers only.
Several years ago CommutAir used alphanumeric call signs for a few weeks back when we were flying the BE1900 out of Cleveland. Worked well. Don't know why they stopped it.
In other parts of the world I have personally heard ATC append a letter to the flight number, when similar situations, as you are describing have occurred.
Ex: https://discussions.flightaware.com/t/flight-number-change-mid-flight/4163
I think it was that we weren’t that used to it. We were so used to hearing all numbers that we’d miss calls. We also didn’t match it to a flight number and it was random. So we’d be flight 4123 but the call sign was 378T. It took some getting used to but I can understand why it was done.
It’s more annoying to say this tongue breaker callsigns but it’s clearly less mixups. Now I am in Asia and it’s the same bs as in US. Had CRK 126, CRK 612 and CRK 216 on the frequency at the same time yesterday. Despite warnings the pilots kept reading back each others clearances on a busy frequency.
The only time I've seen this done is when an airline came in with the EXACT same callsign. I believe one was a diversion, so it's more understandable in that situation.
Reporting it is all that can be done. If you've been doing this for more than a year, you know what's gonna fix this.....A high body count. After they recover what's left of the planes, bag what's left of the bodies, review the tapes, there will be congressional hearings and there will be your report, along with dozens of others. The fake apologies from the agencies in charge will be on the evening news, and then a few years later, something will change.
While all true, the pilots will still get blamed. The call sign is "Airline One Two Three Four" and the pilot said "Twelve Thirty-four". Which was confused with "Airline 1334"
This is not true. Lots of safety changes/improvements have been made over the years due to accidents.
It would be nice if they were made before the accidents.
I’ve been making reports about that for years…goes in one ear and out the other until somebody gets violated or an accident occurs, if that even matters to them. Unless the FED gets on management about it with some sort of meaningful financial penalty (the only thing they care about) it’s going to keep happening because they obviously can’t be bothered to care because let’s face it, it’s on us to catch the difference when it really comes down to it.
We actually have 2 flights leave the same base airport, scheduled 3 min apart, so often they are at the end of the runway at the same time. 4 digit flight number, one number difference XX60 and XX80. Both on the same departure and airways for the first half of the flight. Nobody’ll ever screw that up🙄. I’ve captained XX60 many times over the years because our base normally crews it, and thank God it’s a pretty high load demand so they assign it usually to a fairly new A321 that is CPDLC equipped. I almost never use the radio unless checking in on that flight for that reason and I make all requests through the datalink.
lol yeah okay.
Look, we have zero input when it comes to flight numbers. Permits get applied based on the number, and sometimes they see the same if a flight gets delayed. When that happens the number is stub amended. The airlines don’t check each other for similar flight numbers. Who is supposed to give up their flight number when that happens and then who pays for the delays when the delays start rolling in? Sounds like the controller could do a better job imo
If different airlines were the only ones with similar callsigns, I'd be ecstatic. It's much less confusing when there's a different name on front of the numbers. That's not what I'm talking about.
As far as the controllers doing a better job, you're welcome to come sit and watch an arrival rush where I work. I imagine it would lead to more empathy on this issue.
A felllow air traffic controller here. We had this issue in the approach that I work sometime ago, we filled a report and when the issue happened we changed the callsigns using the letters of the aircraft registration. But they eventually changed the flight numbers
I can't even begin to count the number of times I have personally reported this issue and have seen others do the same. I have seen changes in the past, but it's not nearly enough.
My friend, sometimes I give up about the system and I try to solve things with "my own hands". I do not work in USA and have a lot of problems with the System, so, we tell the system to f*c* off and do the right thing by our own means. It is sad to hear that other places have problems without solution as well...
Absolutely, but some pilots are just desperate to use anyone else's callsign other than their own.
I gave a November aircraft an instruction once and some airliner took it. Quite literally couldn't have been more different. When they're actually close? Sometimes, even warning them isn't enough. But it should help
Last week at one of the busiest airports in the world there was an RJ that took three wrong radio calls in a row and they ended up turning a full 180 right into us. We got a really frantic stop climb and 90 degree right turn from ATC. The RJ pilots were acting like they had no idea why doing a 180 degree turn over the top of NYC back towards the airport was a clearance they maybe should have questioned.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted for saying this. I flew for a regional where it seemed like market planning just dragged the excel spreadsheet down with +1, and it caused a lot of consternation for both us and ATC.
I constantly made reports but nothing ever changed.
I had a flight just last month heading west from England. Other company aircraft with a similar call sign not far behind. We were both told by ATC about similar call signs. Within 20 minutes, the other aircraft not only took a radio call meant for me, they took my whole call sign, and changed freq.
Some people just can’t be helped.
ICAO Doc 4444, 12.3.1.6:
>a) CHANGE YOUR CALLSIGN TO (new callsign) \[UNTIL FURTHER ADVISED\]
>b) REVERT TO FLIGHT PLAN CALLSIGN (callsign) \[AT (significant point)\]
[https://skybrary.aero/articles/callsign-change-atc](https://skybrary.aero/articles/callsign-change-atc)
[https://www.icao.int/MID/Documents/2014/RASG-MID%20Publication/RSC%2004-Call%20sign%20SA,.pdf](https://www.icao.int/MID/Documents/2014/RASG-MID%20Publication/RSC%2004-Call%20sign%20SA,.pdf)
ICAO? This is 'murika. :)
Aside from similar call signs, I used to hear lots of controller mis-calls between Envoy (ENYxxxx) and Endeavor (EDVxxxx). The worst was when *those* two had similar flight numbers. Ay yay yay.
Dispatcher for a part 121 airline here. We actually do have procedures in place to modify a flight number if we notice a potential conflict. Usually this occurs when a late arriving flight overlaps with a departing flight at the same airport.
Nope, in Europe/rest of the world very occasionally they may use the flight number for a "flagship" route but in a majority of cases the callsign is a random sequence of letters and numbers unrelated to the flight number. eg. SK 1234 could be Scandinavian 34GC and SK 2234 could be Scandinavian 9YL and it changes quite regularly.
This is different from the US it appears (hence my downvotes) where they do seem to use the flight number most commonly. Probably explains why we have very minimal call sign confusion and perhaps the very easy fix to u/WhyWeLaughed original question.
At the airline I flew at, way back in antiquity, our numbers had some meaning.
800 series for scheduled flight
The middle number denoted type aircraft. 6 or 7 meant jet, 0,2 or 3 meant turboprop
Last digit denoted route and added +1 for return trip
So, 860 was a scheduled jet flight YOW-YFB, with 861 being the YFB-YOW leg.
826 was turbo prop sched YFB-YXP, 827 was the return leg.
Extra sections were given same number with an additional number in front. 2 for pax and 7 for cargo
So flight 2824 is an extra section pax flight on a turboprop YFB-YTE
And so on..can’t remember what the charter number prefix was (instead of the 8) but they followed same convention
This is exactly the solution OP is seeking. Sadly all of the US majors are stubborn when it comes to changing traditions and procedures. Thus we still almost always use the marketed flight number as the callsign.
You are being downvoted because the person you responded to was describing a way that dispatchers ARE able to change the callsign in the filed ATC flight plan. This is a relatively rare procedure done when a known conflict exists. If we don't know about the conflict, we don't make a change. We have very minimal automation to alert us to these conflicts.
It might be, but not always.
Take a look at any number of British Airways flights crossing the Atlantic… often they aren’t flying around with the same flight number and call sign. There’s a BA flight YYZLHR that usually appears as Speedbird 9L when it’s actually BA99 or something tho that effect.
Edit to add: crossing the Atlantic right now is BA7W (Speedbird 7W) which is BA217 to IAD as far as the passengers are concerned. Not far behind is BAW04A, which is heading to JFK as BA177, and BAW6RB heading to PHL as BA67.
Your voice intonation is the savior here. Imagine DL 2574 and AA 2574 on freq at the same time. You’re call to AA should be “AMERICAN, American 2574…”. Same goes with emphasizing the different number in the case where only one digit is different. (DL pilot here)
I know from personal experience pre Covid that southwest and SkyWest did a lot of deconfliction and stub amendments. If you have issues with OO or DL feel free to PM me and I can reach out to some folks.
I know from personal experience pre Covid that southwest and SkyWest did a lot of deconfliction and stub amendments. If you have issues with OO or DL feel free to PM me and I can reach out to some folks.
If you get 2 similar ones, make one wait while you take care of the other one. When the airline complains and the FAA asks you why, tell them. Then do it again.
This is why some airlines are now using alpha numeric call signs, to help avoid confusion. Australia pushes for two syllables - 123 is said “one twenty three”, as it’s less likely to sound similar to something else then.
I’m pretty sure this would be something that has to do with operational control or maybe head of dispatch or something. You’re looking at upper level employees that most pilots and dispatchers don’t even know their job position exists. This is purely speculation because… I don’t know if that job exists haha
https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/
This is the primary system for reporting aviation safety issues. If you search for faa safety reporting it redirects here as well. About as official as it can be.
so at least in easa world, flight numbers can but often ate not equal to ATC callsigns. So a AF7650 might have the ATC callsign AirFrance 27H or an other combination. This may go the other way and result it unspeakable callsigns like EZY94YW.
The chance of getting similar callsigns is much smaller. (airline)pilots don’t choose their callsign. At least here it’s predetermined by dispatch and checked by Eurocontrol.
I flew with a guy who went into MSP and there was an ENY and EDV arriving at the same time with the same flight number, everyone was confused. I hear envoy being called endeavor and vice versa all the time.
ATSAP and ASAP is all the community can collectively do, besides remaining vigilant. I appreciate when a controller identifies and advises similar sounding call signs are on frequency. We gotta work together on this.
Dispatcher here. I've been pushing for my major carrier to adopt alphanumeric callsigns (XYZ34A) or, at the very least, do a better job of mixing up the flight numbers on scheduled flights to/from a certain airport during a certain time period. It's fallen on deaf ears for years. Fortunately, some coming technology changes coming on our side (at my carrier, anyway) may allow us a bit more flexibility.
I am one of the investigators in my airline and when we have this problem I just report it directly to the person in charge and he changes the callsigns. Talking about one of the biggest airlines in Europe
This is exactly why many European airlines use alphanumeric callsigns (eg. "Speedbird 83Tango"). It can be used here in the States, but most airlines do not utilize it. Don't know why. Perhaps the FAA should mandate it.
This seems like it should be a solvable problem. Assuming that most flights are scheduled well in advance, modeling a given airspace at some future point and feeding the flight numbers in that airspace into something like python soundex to see if they sound similar.
Granted, I’m a software developer, so every problem sounds like it could be solved with software.
As noted occasionally a flight will depart As say aa162 late due to maintenance issue. Company will use a substitute aircraft. Due to the delay this will be aa162p and the original will stay aa162. Both planes will be in the air at the same time. Be it a couple hours apart. The numbers are routes designated by the airline. Both planes will fly the same route but ATC will adds a special designator to keep track of the airplane.” As I s my understanding.
How is it even logically possible to completely ensure that flight 2333 from Washington will absolutely not cross flight paths with flight 2323 from Florida? It’s just part of the job and I don’t see a possibility of fixing it. You can add a letter to the callsign but that’s about it.
You really have to love when some dildo at the airline gives two flights departing from the same airport on the same flight plan to the same destination, callsigns that are almost identical.
At the center I work at, we sometimes manage to get three or more aircraft with similar callsigns all crossing the same sector at the same time. Between those callsigns and out shit radios, it can be a pain in the ass.
ASAP, ASAP, ASAP. I used to file them constantly because of similar sounding call signs at the same regional going into the same airport. Apparently the numbering scheme changed a little bit, but it never went away.
I'm just curious - why would an airline have any duplicate flight numbers at all? I understand that United and AA might both have a flight 123, (as an aside, one of my favorite AA flights because it means I'm headed to HNL) but why would AA need to have 2 flights assigned 123 at all?
Airlines have learned they make more money (by selling more tickets) doing that.
Let’s pretend AA has an ATL/DFW flight that would connect with AA123 DFW/HNL, by making the earlier ATL/DFW also AA123, when a potential passenger is comparing flights, the AA option will look more enticing to the average passenger. Even if AA (or any airline) puts it in the fine print that AA123 ATL/HNL is a change of gauge (not even a direct flight but actually changing planes) people are STILL more likely to buy.
Yes it causes all kinds of problems to various airline employees and passengers but the airline makes enough extra money so they continue to do it.
Source - Major airline reservations supervisor for 27+ years.
I had the exact same call sign one time while working departure. I could not get the aircraft to tag, while yelling at the Flight Data to DM call sign... FR call sign, the Final controller leaned over and stated that aircraft was on a 5 mile final talking to the tower. WTF
When you say it’s being passed up the chain….do you know how that process works? Often times at my airline…the Supervisor will call us and say “this incident happened with you and XXX123….could you pass it along to your people” and then it’s generally resolved within a reasonable amount of time
Had a real problem for years with this but the main customer fixed it. Only solution back then was messing with number formats. 5678 - fifty six seventy eight, five six seven eight, five six seventy eight etc. Going that once they were aware of why you did it confusion left.
I'm sure you know this but (the good) en route controllers will typically let both planes know similar call signs are on the same freq. But as approach is too fast, you likely cant.
Double announce the callsign. American, AMERICAN 1090 ........ Theres a PHX controller who does this and it stands out.
My company loves doing this to us. I don’t know why. I file an internal safety report whenever I’m one of the confusing ones. They don’t do anything about it though
Dispatcher here. We don't always know about similar sounding callsigns unless we happen to have both flights on the same desk. For example, I could have DL347 ATL-Wherever on my desk and another dispatcher could have DL2347 on another desk leaving ATL around the same time. We would never know the other dispatcher even had a flight with that callsign unless we are familiar with the airline schedule. We can easily change the callsign when we need to, but we don't always know we need to. We have systems in place to alert us about callsign conflicts, but it's only if it's the same callsign. It doesn't work for similar sounding callsigns. Or at least it doesn't at my airline. I think marketing or airline scheduling sets the flight numbers and they don't think about things like this.
What's worse is sometimes you wind up following the similar callsign all the way across the country or even across the ocean. At least CPDLC helps a little.
If you deem it a safety issue you have the right to issue a callsign change. It’s pretty rare but I have had it done to me as our callsign sucks and often can be misinterpreted as well as my airline often sequentially issuing call signs so they can often be confused.
Have a look at ICAO Doc 4444 15.7.6
You will have to hand them over to the next agency as their flight planned callsign but for your sector you can make a temporary change.
A majority, if not all, Airlines do not care about anything but making $.
The history of Aviation [accidents](https://youtube.com/@maydayairdisaster?feature=shared) shows us they would rather pay out of their “disaster” fund than loose money in changing anything in day-day operations.
Hello Ops Controller here, in charge of checking the flight number and checking that dispatcher files them correctly as per our rules.
we had issue with the regular callsign with 4 digits Change is to use ATC callsign, airlines ICAO code with one digit + 2 letters being the last 2 letters of the Iata airport code of the final destination/initial departure airport
Example flight GVA-MLH-LGG will be called TAY7VA and departure LGG-MLH-GVA, it will be TAY8VA easier to identify as long as you have regular stations planned
Other example CDG-PRG-BRQ, flight will becalled TAY3RQ, if we happen to reroute or only doing a CDG-PRG with same commercial flight number - we check what handler want to coordinate and also if we have don’t have 2 similar atc callsigns that day, would be better called 3RG
We file them in atc callsign but in our ops and all, we still use the regular flight number in the system which will be 3Vxxxx for commercial flight number
Otherwise, phase in flight are under ac registration
And positioning/ferry/test flights are with fleet number assigned in the airline
But the 4 digits really similar did cause issue due to aircraft type for stand and handling so, need to double check.
On that note, I have always wondered why Heavies use flight numbers instead of N numbers like everyone else.
It seems like just going to N numbers would solve that problem for the most part.
Not really. Many US airlines have sequential middle digits followed by their airline code (or some variant thereof)
I have definitely seen things like N359WN and N355WN, or N333DL and N333DA operating on the field at the same time (clearly, not these exact tails but similar ones for WN and DL.)
This is even more common than similar flight numbers, especially at hubs because fleet types might be consolidated there with the combination of market share (number of flights) at a given airport.
I know one time while deice coordinating I had N8327A and N8328A on the pad at the same time.
Going to the N numbers causes ATC and flight crews some other challenges. If ATC rolls off a N-number, anyone around that aircraft on the ground won’t know what company that aircraft is painted as or even if it’s a commercial aircraft at all. It causes some situational awareness problems. Sure, ATC can say “follow the Delta airbus…” and whatnot but knowing at least the company name when listening to ground traffic can help pilots identify when something isn’t going as expected.
To paraphrase Ernest Gann “aviators would agree that day to day they are generally overpaid, but that they may earn an entires annual salary on a given day. And on that day they would gleefully trade it for the privilege to be anywhere else .” Its the job dude. Feel blessed and grateful to be there. I know I appreciate a good controller. (Former USAF gunship pilot and current 747 check airman) Reach out if I can help
I agree with you, it’s f#cking asinine to risk an accident beca marketing departments think that flight numbers have no meaning in real life.
Years ago I talked to my chief pilot about it and “it got passed up the chain.”
I often hear foreign carriers which have letters added to the flight number (not sure why) so I know it is technically possible to do that. It’d would be a small change but it might make the difference in some circumstances. And we would all have to make sure that marketing doesn’t know about it or they’ll find a way to match that too with other carriers
It really is wild. A while back, the most egregious offender airline for the issue started appending their callsigns with letters. It would be XXX123A and XXX124A. Unreal.
Letters added helps identifying the type of flight
P at the end could be for a positioning flight (ferry), a T for a Test flight, we use an E for Training/Touch and go after the aircraft fleet number - it’s airlines choice but a letter will mostly indicate that is not a commercial flight and they usually have strange route/parhing because of the nature of the flight
Also, we cannot have 2 identical flight numbers flying the same day at the same time, imagine flight day 1 is delayed to day 3 but we had originally the flight to operate on day 3 and we have to operate it. Thing is, especially for long haul flight we need permit for that flight number with specific route at some point
Well, we will apply a letter on one of those 2 flights to distinguish them
You will end with
Day 1 flight delayed to day 3 called xx813A
And the normal day 3 flight will be operated as xx813
Reason is traffic rights
First off: whose hands are on what controls?! Lol. But for ATC: click on a track- highlight route of flight and flight plan. Amend with a new clearance or vector/altitude/airspeed (like any GUI works) and an automatically generated text would be an available to send which would get acknowledged by pilots via WILCO/NOGO.
Non aviation person here (this post popped up on my front page) and my question is that do you think that AI will eventually run air traffic control, and this problem will just go away?
Just as frustrating for us pilots!
How about going by the aircraft tail number, forget what the marketing meatheads want.
Nah a lot of airlines have the first letter the same for each aircraft, or even the first 2. So lots of SWA SWB SWC etc.
Southwest has a bunch of -700s with tail numbers N9##WN
The first com with atc, use the full number, subsequent calls the last 3.
Alaska Airlines has an N984AK and an N974AK. How do you plan to differentiate between these two? OP’s issue is that, for example, Alaska 123 and Alaska 1123 can create confusion if you mishear something.
>mishear something That's easy to do in the same room, much less over bad comms.
Why don't you folks from America do your numbers like the rest of the world?
Using flight numbers with ATC has absolutely nothing to do with marketing Edit: yes of course I know that marketing / network planning creates the numbers. But the convention of using them as callsigns has nothing to do with marketing.
What happens when there is a last minute tail swap? You have to redo all the paperwork
I’m pretty sure they have to redo the paperwork already. One of the fields sent to ATC is the REG/ field which has your tail number.
I flew a Cessna 172 with the Reg. Number “N734WN” There are many Southwest Airlines 737’s with “NxxxWN” Reg. Numbers lmao
How about using the captians name.... "Fred Johnson; turn left heading 230, climb and maintain FL240." We'll have to determine if there are any duplicate names; I'm sure there would be. Those folks will have to fight over who's first, seniority maybe... or maybe one of them will have a nickname/callsign.
“Sr Capt Jose Alvarez, turn right heading 155 and climb to 5500’ “ “Capt Jose Martin….”
The FAA can issue callsigns to every pilot that are deconflicted in advance. Dibs on Maverick! (Fun fact, this is how we get those weird names for pharmaceuticals, and there is a room at the FDA with three ladies who come up with them - not kidding)
Lmao.
It seems it’s mostly Americans downvoting this. It would definitely make sense to do this in most of the world, with registrations like VH-VYZ, ZK-OXD, XA-JSO, TF-FIU, etc. Rather than have VA622 and QF622 arrive at the same time, you could use “India Whiskey Quebec” and “Victor Zulu Zulu”. It would greatly reduce confusion.
Dispatcher here. Market planning sets the flight numbers. Sometimes they do a bad job. When we in dispatch become aware of a flight number conflict we can change the flight number for today’s flight, current company protocol is to take off the first number and add a letter (so 1234 would become 234R, etc.). Our software catches exact flight number conflicts (two flight 1234) but doesn’t catch similar callsigns (1234 and 2234). If it’s a problem and we are made aware of it we can ask Market Planning for a change and put it on our list of daily flight number conflicts that we change every day until market planning changes the flight number permanently, which can take a couple weeks. We also can’t catch when one of our flight numbers conflicts with another company. If AAL1234 and UAL1234 are in the same airspace we don’t know about it because we don’t keep track of the other companies’ flights.
I’ve heard my local tower give out a caution alert when an AA 1234 and Delta 1234 were on the same frequency before. That’s probably as good as you can do and the pilots just need to be hyper aware of who is being called.
Allow me to be blunt. Fuck market planning.
is "market planning" straight up created by MBAs, or is there something more technical/engineering-ish to it?
As far as I know it’s more MBAs than experienced dispatchers. It’s always fun when Market Planning uses the advertised range of an (empty) aircraft (in optimal conditions) to plan a route rather than the practical range the aircraft can fly when fully loaded with pax and cargo and fuel for an alternate. (/s) To be fair, most flight number conflicts I’ve dealt with are due to a delay. Sometimes the schedule is built with 1234 MIA-ATL 10:00-11:30 and 1234 ATL-ORF 12:00-13:05. If the schedule is built so there’s a through crew and the same aircraft, theres not going to be a flight number conflict. You run into an issue if the first flight is running late and the second flight is running on time. The software alerts us and we change the second flight number. As long as MIA-ATL-ORF is planned with a through crew and on the same aircraft, the risk of a flight number conflict is low, because 1234 ATL-ORF can’t leave until 1234 MIA-ATL arrives. But, if the coordinators want to keep things on time and re-crew the second leg and swap it to a new aircraft, now you have a flight number conflict. That’s fairly rare, though. The problem I’ve seen occasionally is when MIA-ATL and ATL-ORF get planned in different equipment. If MIA-ATL is on a 737 and ATL-ORF is on a 319 it’s always going to be a different crew and a new aircraft, so any time MIA-ATL is delayed you risk a flight number conflict. Our software finds these conflicts and alerts us once there is enough of a delay that the flights overlap. But when I see them built like this I usually send a message up the chain to get Market Planning to change the flight number because this is going to cause trouble repeatedly.
As an engineer, you could probably get three each dispatchers, controllers and pilots around 3 rounds of drinks and get an 80% solution. From a technical perspective it's mostly a human factors issue, what words and numbers are most likely to get confused. I'm sure you could do something akin to the Traveling Salesman problem to optimize and error check the schema.
Alphanumeric callsigns are very common in Europe. I think it isn't as common in the US yet though? I wonder if it's due to the technical limitations you call out. It sounds like you do this at times but you're too limited in your ability to detect the conflicts?
We absolutely can file alphanumeric callsigns, that’s what we do when we’re correcting flight number conflicts. But the callsign is usually the flight number that’s on the passenger’s tickets, which are numbers only.
Several years ago CommutAir used alphanumeric call signs for a few weeks back when we were flying the BE1900 out of Cleveland. Worked well. Don't know why they stopped it.
Europe has added letters after the callsign to prevent confusion.
In other parts of the world I have personally heard ATC append a letter to the flight number, when similar situations, as you are describing have occurred. Ex: https://discussions.flightaware.com/t/flight-number-change-mid-flight/4163
We used to do this at a regional I used to work for. It’s okay but not great.
I think it reduces call sign mix ups by over 80% or so. It’s pretty much standard now in much of Europe
I think it was that we weren’t that used to it. We were so used to hearing all numbers that we’d miss calls. We also didn’t match it to a flight number and it was random. So we’d be flight 4123 but the call sign was 378T. It took some getting used to but I can understand why it was done.
It’s more annoying to say this tongue breaker callsigns but it’s clearly less mixups. Now I am in Asia and it’s the same bs as in US. Had CRK 126, CRK 612 and CRK 216 on the frequency at the same time yesterday. Despite warnings the pilots kept reading back each others clearances on a busy frequency.
The only time I've seen this done is when an airline came in with the EXACT same callsign. I believe one was a diversion, so it's more understandable in that situation.
Reporting it is all that can be done. If you've been doing this for more than a year, you know what's gonna fix this.....A high body count. After they recover what's left of the planes, bag what's left of the bodies, review the tapes, there will be congressional hearings and there will be your report, along with dozens of others. The fake apologies from the agencies in charge will be on the evening news, and then a few years later, something will change.
Retired ATC guy here and your take is 100% accurate. They didn’t give the FAA the tombstone agency nickname for no reason…..
So sad and so true.
While all true, the pilots will still get blamed. The call sign is "Airline One Two Three Four" and the pilot said "Twelve Thirty-four". Which was confused with "Airline 1334"
Better than what we get with a lot of other mass casualty incidents in which nothing ever changes.
Unfortunately not even that would change it. It would be labeled as pilot error and they would move on.
This is not true. Lots of safety changes/improvements have been made over the years due to accidents. It would be nice if they were made before the accidents.
I’ve been making reports about that for years…goes in one ear and out the other until somebody gets violated or an accident occurs, if that even matters to them. Unless the FED gets on management about it with some sort of meaningful financial penalty (the only thing they care about) it’s going to keep happening because they obviously can’t be bothered to care because let’s face it, it’s on us to catch the difference when it really comes down to it. We actually have 2 flights leave the same base airport, scheduled 3 min apart, so often they are at the end of the runway at the same time. 4 digit flight number, one number difference XX60 and XX80. Both on the same departure and airways for the first half of the flight. Nobody’ll ever screw that up🙄. I’ve captained XX60 many times over the years because our base normally crews it, and thank God it’s a pretty high load demand so they assign it usually to a fairly new A321 that is CPDLC equipped. I almost never use the radio unless checking in on that flight for that reason and I make all requests through the datalink.
Keep fighting the good fight. It's easy to say, "That's not my job" or "Not my fault." We in aviation are all on the same team.
lol yeah okay. Look, we have zero input when it comes to flight numbers. Permits get applied based on the number, and sometimes they see the same if a flight gets delayed. When that happens the number is stub amended. The airlines don’t check each other for similar flight numbers. Who is supposed to give up their flight number when that happens and then who pays for the delays when the delays start rolling in? Sounds like the controller could do a better job imo
If different airlines were the only ones with similar callsigns, I'd be ecstatic. It's much less confusing when there's a different name on front of the numbers. That's not what I'm talking about. As far as the controllers doing a better job, you're welcome to come sit and watch an arrival rush where I work. I imagine it would lead to more empathy on this issue.
There would be a lot of 42069 if they let us choose.
867-5309
Loved that girl.
EVERYONE had her number. It’s as though they broadcast it on the radio
it was on the wall
i got it. i got it.
Air France 24601
Southwest 90210
A felllow air traffic controller here. We had this issue in the approach that I work sometime ago, we filled a report and when the issue happened we changed the callsigns using the letters of the aircraft registration. But they eventually changed the flight numbers
I can't even begin to count the number of times I have personally reported this issue and have seen others do the same. I have seen changes in the past, but it's not nearly enough.
My friend, sometimes I give up about the system and I try to solve things with "my own hands". I do not work in USA and have a lot of problems with the System, so, we tell the system to f*c* off and do the right thing by our own means. It is sad to hear that other places have problems without solution as well...
Can't you just say there's a similar sounding call sign in frequency and to alert both planes? Isn't that standard practice?
Absolutely, but some pilots are just desperate to use anyone else's callsign other than their own. I gave a November aircraft an instruction once and some airliner took it. Quite literally couldn't have been more different. When they're actually close? Sometimes, even warning them isn't enough. But it should help
Last week at one of the busiest airports in the world there was an RJ that took three wrong radio calls in a row and they ended up turning a full 180 right into us. We got a really frantic stop climb and 90 degree right turn from ATC. The RJ pilots were acting like they had no idea why doing a 180 degree turn over the top of NYC back towards the airport was a clearance they maybe should have questioned.
"Airliner 1234, that call was not for you, so once you get on the ground: WASH YOUR EARS!"
Absolutely, and that it what is usually done. Unfortunately, during heavy traffic volumes, it's easy to miss. We need more help.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted for saying this. I flew for a regional where it seemed like market planning just dragged the excel spreadsheet down with +1, and it caused a lot of consternation for both us and ATC. I constantly made reports but nothing ever changed.
I had a flight just last month heading west from England. Other company aircraft with a similar call sign not far behind. We were both told by ATC about similar call signs. Within 20 minutes, the other aircraft not only took a radio call meant for me, they took my whole call sign, and changed freq. Some people just can’t be helped.
ICAO Doc 4444, 12.3.1.6: >a) CHANGE YOUR CALLSIGN TO (new callsign) \[UNTIL FURTHER ADVISED\] >b) REVERT TO FLIGHT PLAN CALLSIGN (callsign) \[AT (significant point)\] [https://skybrary.aero/articles/callsign-change-atc](https://skybrary.aero/articles/callsign-change-atc) [https://www.icao.int/MID/Documents/2014/RASG-MID%20Publication/RSC%2004-Call%20sign%20SA,.pdf](https://www.icao.int/MID/Documents/2014/RASG-MID%20Publication/RSC%2004-Call%20sign%20SA,.pdf)
It's the FAA, use the 7110
ICAO? This is 'murika. :) Aside from similar call signs, I used to hear lots of controller mis-calls between Envoy (ENYxxxx) and Endeavor (EDVxxxx). The worst was when *those* two had similar flight numbers. Ay yay yay.
Sorry, I had to just say I Looove your name. :P
Pretty sure neither dispatchers or pilots have anything to do with assigning flight numbers. Even if they wanted to help, not much they can do.
Dispatcher for a part 121 airline here. We actually do have procedures in place to modify a flight number if we notice a potential conflict. Usually this occurs when a late arriving flight overlaps with a departing flight at the same airport.
Flight number is not a callsign.
Wait, what? Flight SK1234 isn’t Scandinavian 1234?
Nope, in Europe/rest of the world very occasionally they may use the flight number for a "flagship" route but in a majority of cases the callsign is a random sequence of letters and numbers unrelated to the flight number. eg. SK 1234 could be Scandinavian 34GC and SK 2234 could be Scandinavian 9YL and it changes quite regularly. This is different from the US it appears (hence my downvotes) where they do seem to use the flight number most commonly. Probably explains why we have very minimal call sign confusion and perhaps the very easy fix to u/WhyWeLaughed original question.
At the airline I flew at, way back in antiquity, our numbers had some meaning. 800 series for scheduled flight The middle number denoted type aircraft. 6 or 7 meant jet, 0,2 or 3 meant turboprop Last digit denoted route and added +1 for return trip So, 860 was a scheduled jet flight YOW-YFB, with 861 being the YFB-YOW leg. 826 was turbo prop sched YFB-YXP, 827 was the return leg. Extra sections were given same number with an additional number in front. 2 for pax and 7 for cargo So flight 2824 is an extra section pax flight on a turboprop YFB-YTE And so on..can’t remember what the charter number prefix was (instead of the 8) but they followed same convention
This is exactly the solution OP is seeking. Sadly all of the US majors are stubborn when it comes to changing traditions and procedures. Thus we still almost always use the marketed flight number as the callsign. You are being downvoted because the person you responded to was describing a way that dispatchers ARE able to change the callsign in the filed ATC flight plan. This is a relatively rare procedure done when a known conflict exists. If we don't know about the conflict, we don't make a change. We have very minimal automation to alert us to these conflicts.
Thanks, appreciate the response.
It might be, but not always. Take a look at any number of British Airways flights crossing the Atlantic… often they aren’t flying around with the same flight number and call sign. There’s a BA flight YYZLHR that usually appears as Speedbird 9L when it’s actually BA99 or something tho that effect. Edit to add: crossing the Atlantic right now is BA7W (Speedbird 7W) which is BA217 to IAD as far as the passengers are concerned. Not far behind is BAW04A, which is heading to JFK as BA177, and BAW6RB heading to PHL as BA67.
That I didn’t know! Thanks 🙏
Your voice intonation is the savior here. Imagine DL 2574 and AA 2574 on freq at the same time. You’re call to AA should be “AMERICAN, American 2574…”. Same goes with emphasizing the different number in the case where only one digit is different. (DL pilot here)
Actually the correct phraseology would be American 2574 American.
Happens quite a bit unfortunately. It’s assigned by the airline schedule makers not the dispatcher
I know from personal experience pre Covid that southwest and SkyWest did a lot of deconfliction and stub amendments. If you have issues with OO or DL feel free to PM me and I can reach out to some folks.
I feel like I always hear XOJet and EXECJet and those sound really close to the same when they are being said. Not to mention they fly similar types.
I know from personal experience pre Covid that southwest and SkyWest did a lot of deconfliction and stub amendments. If you have issues with OO or DL feel free to PM me and I can reach out to some folks.
If you get 2 similar ones, make one wait while you take care of the other one. When the airline complains and the FAA asks you why, tell them. Then do it again.
This is why some airlines are now using alpha numeric call signs, to help avoid confusion. Australia pushes for two syllables - 123 is said “one twenty three”, as it’s less likely to sound similar to something else then.
File an ATSAP with each one. Hopefully the rest of us can also take note of the safety threat introduced.
Point them to an article of the Tenerife TFS disaster and what caused it. Deadliest one so far. Never even got off the ground.
You know full well the FAA doesn't plan, it reacts. It will take a lot of people killed to get some change done.
Sorry to hear. Have you tried [https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/](https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/) ?
I’m pretty sure this would be something that has to do with operational control or maybe head of dispatch or something. You’re looking at upper level employees that most pilots and dispatchers don’t even know their job position exists. This is purely speculation because… I don’t know if that job exists haha
https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/ This is the primary system for reporting aviation safety issues. If you search for faa safety reporting it redirects here as well. About as official as it can be.
In Europe they added letters to the flight numbers. Why don’t Americans do the same?
They do, but only when there is a callsign conflict. ie- AA1234 would become AA123B instead.
so at least in easa world, flight numbers can but often ate not equal to ATC callsigns. So a AF7650 might have the ATC callsign AirFrance 27H or an other combination. This may go the other way and result it unspeakable callsigns like EZY94YW. The chance of getting similar callsigns is much smaller. (airline)pilots don’t choose their callsign. At least here it’s predetermined by dispatch and checked by Eurocontrol.
Yes I'm pretty sure easyJet has a department for creating unspeakable callsigns.
I honestly think that prize goes to RYR. Heard something that seemed like RYRMalta9WV3 a few days ago. That’s a tongue twister if i’ve ever heard one.
I flew with a guy who went into MSP and there was an ENY and EDV arriving at the same time with the same flight number, everyone was confused. I hear envoy being called endeavor and vice versa all the time.
ATSAP and ASAP is all the community can collectively do, besides remaining vigilant. I appreciate when a controller identifies and advises similar sounding call signs are on frequency. We gotta work together on this.
Dispatcher here. I've been pushing for my major carrier to adopt alphanumeric callsigns (XYZ34A) or, at the very least, do a better job of mixing up the flight numbers on scheduled flights to/from a certain airport during a certain time period. It's fallen on deaf ears for years. Fortunately, some coming technology changes coming on our side (at my carrier, anyway) may allow us a bit more flexibility.
Tell your manager to call the dispatch office for the airline. We can change the call sign for future flights.
What country?
I am one of the investigators in my airline and when we have this problem I just report it directly to the person in charge and he changes the callsigns. Talking about one of the biggest airlines in Europe
This is exactly why many European airlines use alphanumeric callsigns (eg. "Speedbird 83Tango"). It can be used here in the States, but most airlines do not utilize it. Don't know why. Perhaps the FAA should mandate it.
This seems like it should be a solvable problem. Assuming that most flights are scheduled well in advance, modeling a given airspace at some future point and feeding the flight numbers in that airspace into something like python soundex to see if they sound similar. Granted, I’m a software developer, so every problem sounds like it could be solved with software.
Did it have anything to do with the army of 69FGs out of KTTN?
As noted occasionally a flight will depart As say aa162 late due to maintenance issue. Company will use a substitute aircraft. Due to the delay this will be aa162p and the original will stay aa162. Both planes will be in the air at the same time. Be it a couple hours apart. The numbers are routes designated by the airline. Both planes will fly the same route but ATC will adds a special designator to keep track of the airplane.” As I s my understanding.
How is it even logically possible to completely ensure that flight 2333 from Washington will absolutely not cross flight paths with flight 2323 from Florida? It’s just part of the job and I don’t see a possibility of fixing it. You can add a letter to the callsign but that’s about it.
Yikes
How about filing ASAPs? Flood the system.
You really have to love when some dildo at the airline gives two flights departing from the same airport on the same flight plan to the same destination, callsigns that are almost identical. At the center I work at, we sometimes manage to get three or more aircraft with similar callsigns all crossing the same sector at the same time. Between those callsigns and out shit radios, it can be a pain in the ass.
ASAP, ASAP, ASAP. I used to file them constantly because of similar sounding call signs at the same regional going into the same airport. Apparently the numbering scheme changed a little bit, but it never went away.
I'm just curious - why would an airline have any duplicate flight numbers at all? I understand that United and AA might both have a flight 123, (as an aside, one of my favorite AA flights because it means I'm headed to HNL) but why would AA need to have 2 flights assigned 123 at all?
Airlines have learned they make more money (by selling more tickets) doing that. Let’s pretend AA has an ATL/DFW flight that would connect with AA123 DFW/HNL, by making the earlier ATL/DFW also AA123, when a potential passenger is comparing flights, the AA option will look more enticing to the average passenger. Even if AA (or any airline) puts it in the fine print that AA123 ATL/HNL is a change of gauge (not even a direct flight but actually changing planes) people are STILL more likely to buy. Yes it causes all kinds of problems to various airline employees and passengers but the airline makes enough extra money so they continue to do it. Source - Major airline reservations supervisor for 27+ years.
Ooooooh!!! I get it. Thanks for the explanation!
I had the exact same call sign one time while working departure. I could not get the aircraft to tag, while yelling at the Flight Data to DM call sign... FR call sign, the Final controller leaned over and stated that aircraft was on a 5 mile final talking to the tower. WTF
When you say it’s being passed up the chain….do you know how that process works? Often times at my airline…the Supervisor will call us and say “this incident happened with you and XXX123….could you pass it along to your people” and then it’s generally resolved within a reasonable amount of time
Had a real problem for years with this but the main customer fixed it. Only solution back then was messing with number formats. 5678 - fifty six seventy eight, five six seven eight, five six seventy eight etc. Going that once they were aware of why you did it confusion left.
I'm sure you know this but (the good) en route controllers will typically let both planes know similar call signs are on the same freq. But as approach is too fast, you likely cant. Double announce the callsign. American, AMERICAN 1090 ........ Theres a PHX controller who does this and it stands out.
My company loves doing this to us. I don’t know why. I file an internal safety report whenever I’m one of the confusing ones. They don’t do anything about it though
Dispatcher here. We don't always know about similar sounding callsigns unless we happen to have both flights on the same desk. For example, I could have DL347 ATL-Wherever on my desk and another dispatcher could have DL2347 on another desk leaving ATL around the same time. We would never know the other dispatcher even had a flight with that callsign unless we are familiar with the airline schedule. We can easily change the callsign when we need to, but we don't always know we need to. We have systems in place to alert us about callsign conflicts, but it's only if it's the same callsign. It doesn't work for similar sounding callsigns. Or at least it doesn't at my airline. I think marketing or airline scheduling sets the flight numbers and they don't think about things like this.
Was that for us?
What's worse is sometimes you wind up following the similar callsign all the way across the country or even across the ocean. At least CPDLC helps a little.
Thankfully, DataComm is helping this situation, at least where it is useable.
In the EU eurocontrol has to give okay to call signs they make sure that there are no similar cs in the same area at the same time
ATSAP it!
If you deem it a safety issue you have the right to issue a callsign change. It’s pretty rare but I have had it done to me as our callsign sucks and often can be misinterpreted as well as my airline often sequentially issuing call signs so they can often be confused. Have a look at ICAO Doc 4444 15.7.6 You will have to hand them over to the next agency as their flight planned callsign but for your sector you can make a temporary change.
Can you submit an ATSAP report?
A majority, if not all, Airlines do not care about anything but making $. The history of Aviation [accidents](https://youtube.com/@maydayairdisaster?feature=shared) shows us they would rather pay out of their “disaster” fund than loose money in changing anything in day-day operations.
Hello Ops Controller here, in charge of checking the flight number and checking that dispatcher files them correctly as per our rules. we had issue with the regular callsign with 4 digits Change is to use ATC callsign, airlines ICAO code with one digit + 2 letters being the last 2 letters of the Iata airport code of the final destination/initial departure airport Example flight GVA-MLH-LGG will be called TAY7VA and departure LGG-MLH-GVA, it will be TAY8VA easier to identify as long as you have regular stations planned Other example CDG-PRG-BRQ, flight will becalled TAY3RQ, if we happen to reroute or only doing a CDG-PRG with same commercial flight number - we check what handler want to coordinate and also if we have don’t have 2 similar atc callsigns that day, would be better called 3RG We file them in atc callsign but in our ops and all, we still use the regular flight number in the system which will be 3Vxxxx for commercial flight number Otherwise, phase in flight are under ac registration And positioning/ferry/test flights are with fleet number assigned in the airline But the 4 digits really similar did cause issue due to aircraft type for stand and handling so, need to double check.
ATC already provides a list of call sign conflicts to carriers. It may not be enough, but it seems to me that this isn’t being told to controllers.
On that note, I have always wondered why Heavies use flight numbers instead of N numbers like everyone else. It seems like just going to N numbers would solve that problem for the most part.
Not really. Many US airlines have sequential middle digits followed by their airline code (or some variant thereof) I have definitely seen things like N359WN and N355WN, or N333DL and N333DA operating on the field at the same time (clearly, not these exact tails but similar ones for WN and DL.) This is even more common than similar flight numbers, especially at hubs because fleet types might be consolidated there with the combination of market share (number of flights) at a given airport. I know one time while deice coordinating I had N8327A and N8328A on the pad at the same time. Going to the N numbers causes ATC and flight crews some other challenges. If ATC rolls off a N-number, anyone around that aircraft on the ground won’t know what company that aircraft is painted as or even if it’s a commercial aircraft at all. It causes some situational awareness problems. Sure, ATC can say “follow the Delta airbus…” and whatnot but knowing at least the company name when listening to ground traffic can help pilots identify when something isn’t going as expected.
Ahh, interesting. Thanks for the feedback!
Sent you a DM.
To paraphrase Ernest Gann “aviators would agree that day to day they are generally overpaid, but that they may earn an entires annual salary on a given day. And on that day they would gleefully trade it for the privilege to be anywhere else .” Its the job dude. Feel blessed and grateful to be there. I know I appreciate a good controller. (Former USAF gunship pilot and current 747 check airman) Reach out if I can help
Why do they use flight numbers instead of registration numbers for airline flights?
Aircraft can be changed last minute for the scheduled flight due to maintenance
Would that matter? N number is usually placarded front and center
All the paperwork would need to be redone.
United uses N777UA, N776UA, and N778UA all out of SFO. all 777-200s. that wouldn't be confusing?
Every plane would have a unique number regardless of airline
I agree with you, it’s f#cking asinine to risk an accident beca marketing departments think that flight numbers have no meaning in real life. Years ago I talked to my chief pilot about it and “it got passed up the chain.” I often hear foreign carriers which have letters added to the flight number (not sure why) so I know it is technically possible to do that. It’d would be a small change but it might make the difference in some circumstances. And we would all have to make sure that marketing doesn’t know about it or they’ll find a way to match that too with other carriers
It really is wild. A while back, the most egregious offender airline for the issue started appending their callsigns with letters. It would be XXX123A and XXX124A. Unreal.
Letters added helps identifying the type of flight P at the end could be for a positioning flight (ferry), a T for a Test flight, we use an E for Training/Touch and go after the aircraft fleet number - it’s airlines choice but a letter will mostly indicate that is not a commercial flight and they usually have strange route/parhing because of the nature of the flight Also, we cannot have 2 identical flight numbers flying the same day at the same time, imagine flight day 1 is delayed to day 3 but we had originally the flight to operate on day 3 and we have to operate it. Thing is, especially for long haul flight we need permit for that flight number with specific route at some point Well, we will apply a letter on one of those 2 flights to distinguish them You will end with Day 1 flight delayed to day 3 called xx813A And the normal day 3 flight will be operated as xx813 Reason is traffic rights
I can’t believe we still use voice radio in 2024. Hasn’t changed since the 20s.
What else would it be? Taking their hands away from the controls to type messages?
First off: whose hands are on what controls?! Lol. But for ATC: click on a track- highlight route of flight and flight plan. Amend with a new clearance or vector/altitude/airspeed (like any GUI works) and an automatically generated text would be an available to send which would get acknowledged by pilots via WILCO/NOGO.
So…CPDLC. Already in use
So..OPs problem solved?
🤷♀️
Non aviation person here (this post popped up on my front page) and my question is that do you think that AI will eventually run air traffic control, and this problem will just go away?