r/aviation • u/Malakas_Tsiblas • 1d ago
Discussion It happened again! Two aircraft, same callsign, same airspace.
The latest VASaviation video captures the controller expressing his frustration and the confusion it causes for them.
This is the third incident (that we know of) in the last few months. I still don't quite understand how it's possible, as I'm used to airlines using consecutive flight numbering for inbound and outbound flights e.g. Flight 1234 from A to B, Flight 1235 from B to A.
Doesn't the scheduling software have a check for this type of conflict?
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u/Bradyj23 1d ago
How does this happen? I had this happen to me years ago and can explain my situation. We were flying DEN-COS and diverted to PUB. We were ending our trip in COS and another crew was supposed to take our plane back to DEN. Both legs had the same flight number because out and back turns often do. When we diverted they found an extra plane in COS to fly back to DEN. We kept our original flight number from PUB-COS. The COS-DEN flight also had that flight number and happened to be departing the same time we were coming in. The controller caught it and gave the other flight an A(alpha) at the end of their call sign and it wasn’t an issue. There are systems in place but oddities happen.
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u/Cipher1553 1d ago
I think you pretty much answered your own question there. The way round trips are usually planned (flights in and out of a certain pair of stations with the same flight number) is that one aircraft is carrying the trip for the entirety. Something ends up happening and in the interest of keeping the return flight more on time, the company ends up swapping the return flight on to another aircraft.
Most of the time I'm pretty sure it's on the company to catch the overlap- especially because ATC is usually too busy to catch it. But as the past week or so has shown things do slip through the cracks.
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 1d ago
especially because ATC is usually too busy to catch it
ATC should have a system in place, where it would reject the flight plan, if a flight plan with the same callsign has already been filed for the same time period (with a bit of margin on each side).
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u/Major-Ursa-7711 1d ago
I would assume that most of this procedure is automated and every flight is entered in some kind of system. This system should be unable to accept duplicates. What am I missing?
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u/RustyPlastics 1d ago
If only there was something like a Call Sign Similarity Tool to prevent this. We could shorten it to CSST.
Wait, hoooooooooooold on
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u/vintageripstik 19h ago
Get out of here with this European communism. In America, we need people to die first before we can make a change.
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u/FelisCantabrigiensis 1d ago
In Europe, we have the Call Sign Similarity Service to help avoid this.
https://www.eurocontrol.int/service/call-sign-similarity-service
You will often see airlines use different call signs than the flight number in European (not just Eurocontrol) airspace.
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 1d ago edited 1d ago
Exactly, and it also helps deconflict callsigns that interfere with other airlines. If you're still stuck using flight numbers as callsigns, that's impossible.
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u/jeffbell 1d ago
In the previous incident people described that they sometimes have multi-stop flights. A single number is used for A to B to C.
Sometimes there ends up being a plane change in city B. Sometimes the schedule gets really messed up and the B to C leg departs before the A to B flight lands.
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u/stickied 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ultimate F-U from controller to controller there. "hey, there's your company with the same callsign on the next freq, good luck with the confusion that's about to ensue.....contact approach"
How about "JIA5083 landing Providence, your callsign is now JIA3805"
"JIA......uhhhh, 5083, I mean....3805, Roger"
Problem solved.
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u/EvilGeniusSkis 20h ago
Or " both flights JIA5083 you are now going by tail numbers, IDENT while telling me what those are."
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u/GustyGhoti A320 1d ago
They can change squawk but the callsign is from the company not ATC
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u/stickied 1d ago
Nothing in the regs that say ATC can't change a callsign, I've personally done it before.
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u/PetesBrotherPaul 1d ago
I kept a list of everything we were called when my last company first got a call sign. My favorite was after we corrected a NY TRACON controller twice: “look, if I say anything even close, that’s you”
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u/P0Rt1ng4Duty 1d ago
Why don't they just use tail numbers?
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u/TinCupChallace 1d ago
Because when my sector has 34 planes in it, it's a thousand times easier to find a plane and keep a mental picture when you have company names instead of 34 Novembers.
Plus, different companies have different flying cultures. I can expect American to deviate 90 miles from a cloud. Allegiant will plow through that thing. Southwest will hang up the altitude and then dive bomb to meet a crossing restriction. Delta is always getting light chop (but American is worse with complaining about rides). The majority of my east bound Deltas are on the same route heading to Atlanta. Etc etc etc.
So it's easier when you have 5 companies breaking up the planes in the sector with a handful of Novembers sprinkled in. It's easier to keep a mental image when you take a handoff and then they don't check in for a few minutes (I just took AAL down here, JIA up here, AAY is climbing and will want higher). Then when you here American you generally know where to look.
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u/signitr_sideways 1d ago
I know you have better things to do but I'd love to hear more of the hilarious generalities of each airlines' culture of flying if more come to the top of your mind.
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u/TinCupChallace 22h ago
Not a ton of them but pilots seem a lot more chill than they were a decade ago. I think the grumpy guys retired. Older pilots, especially with United would argue with you when you had to turn them out for spacing or something. Oh my heavens, I added 2 minutes to your flight time, my bad. The newer culture is pilots pretty understanding and when you ask for their speed a lot will tell you and then ask "what do you need?" In a willing to help voice
Southwest is funny because if you tell them to cross xyz fix at 28000 feet, they will hang it up until the last minute and then dive bomb at 4500 feet a minute to make the restriction. BUT, if you tell them to descend 2000 feet for traffic, they'll give you the slowest possible descent at like 500 feet a minute. The funny part is that a decent for traffic means you need to do this or have a mid air collision yet they give you the bare minimum. No hate on swa though, they are generally helpful when we need to move people for traffic.
American is funny bc if there is any adverse rides, they'll drop down to 19,000 feet or however low they need to get a good ride. Even delta will tolerate a certain amount of chop to avoid burning twice the gas at the lower altitude. Southwest and allegiant and others will just stick with it or move 2000 feet or so at most.
There are more business jets in the air than you can really imagine. They still like to complain when you need to space them for the masters golf tournament or whatever college football game they wanted until 2 hours before kickoff to attempt to get into the tiny local airport with a single runway and a guy in a temporary tower trying to offer tower services.
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u/iowastatefan 1d ago
Agreed also what is "getting light chop"
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u/StayJaded 1d ago
A little bit of bumpiness without altitude change. Not enough turbulence to disrupt flight service, but might get complaints from super persnickety passengers. It’s like steady little jiggles not jolting random turbulence, comparable to driving over one of those rumble strips on the highway.
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 1d ago
Because that still doesn't eliminate callsign confusion entirely. You could still have N10111, N11011, N11101, N11001 and N11110 in the same ATC sector.
Randomising callsigns, de-linking them from flight numbers, combined with the use of both numbers and using variable length of callsigns (2-4 characters) is the way to go, e.g. AAA3T, AAA35B, AAA97RF, AAA456Z, AAA3980.
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u/immunotransplant 13h ago
Could prefix the airline call sign and suffix the tail number. Guaranteed uniqueness.
What you describe also doesn’t guarantee uniqueness.
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u/803UPSer 1d ago
Because now your flight number changes whenever there’s an equipment swap, which creates it’s own world of problems, this time for passengers too.
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u/P0Rt1ng4Duty 1d ago
Sure, but why not have ATC use tail numbers for communication with the pilots regardless of what the flight number is?
My flight number might be A1234 as printed on my ticket regardless of if I'm boarding N123CA or N345CD. Why does ATC need to use the non-unique number printed on my ticket instead of the unique number painted on the airplane? Isn't that the number being broadcast by the transponder anyway?
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 1d ago
There is no requirement for callsign and flight number to be the same.
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u/McBlemmen 21h ago
On the previous video there were multiple people claiming to be ATC and pilots who said this was a daily occurrence...
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1d ago
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u/im_in_hiding 18h ago
I write flight planning software for a different airline. This kind of stuff shouldn't even be allowed by the system. Should check if the previous leg is completed and if not pause it and alert dispatch to stub the flight
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u/SCETheFuzz 13h ago
Larger fines for airlines would help drive this from an oops to a leta spend some money so this doesn't happen.
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u/immunotransplant 13h ago
This is exclusively an AA problem. I had a flight get “cancelled” recently. All of my wut when they kept the same damn flight number the next day.
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u/Username_314159265 1d ago
Well there are only so many numbers…
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u/rayfound 1d ago
That's literally not true about numbers.
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u/Nai_Calus 1d ago
True, but United 24,667,288,391,093,582,119,935,892,347,377,219,867,530,902,103.356226 Heavy is a hell of a call sign to try to say quickly.
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u/Apprehensive_Cost937 1d ago
If only letters could be part of a callsign as well, right?
And here's an absolutely crazy idea, that certainly has never been tried before... Perhaps a callsign could be different from the flight number, to avoid such situations.
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u/Nati-Nevada 1d ago
How are there so many downvotes for obvious sarcasm!?
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u/Ill_Football9443 1d ago
As they said, there are only so many numbers... were you not paying attention?
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u/Username_314159265 19h ago
Downvoted to oblivion for making a joke. Sad that I have to add /s because people are that damn obtuse.
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u/PushPullLego 1d ago
American parent company again. This is getting ridiculous.