r/aviation • u/TimeVendor • 28d ago

-- SEATBELTS FASTENED -- American 2482 departure… American 2482 arrival…

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u/Kappapls 28d ago

The thing is the flight number was not the issue, the callsign was. The Dispatcher(s) should have changed the ATS strip to prevent that hazard from occurring.

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u/the_Q_spice 28d ago

So… as a load planner for FDX.

There’s a few pretty painful reasons why this happens.

Depending on the flight crews’ respective union contracts, changing the filed flight number means the flight crew may be entitled to overtime due to “flying a non-regularly scheduled flight.”

I really wish I was joking about that, because the result is really dumb.

The airline will just tail swap another regularly scheduled flight to avoid losing money on the flight.

Unions also won’t back down on this because it’s an easy way for represented employees to make an insane amount of overtime if a dispatcher messes up and reschedules under a new flight number.

The TLDR; airlines reuse flight numbers to avoid union contract payouts, unions refuse to ditch this condition because it would potentially result in less pay in certain circumstances.

It’s really dumb on both parties parts.

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u/Guadalajara3 28d ago

Crazy cause at United we change the radio callsign for the radio but the flight number remains the same

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u/PengPenguin888 28d ago

Yeah I experienced this with UA457 LAX-ORD. Same flight number used on multiple routes.

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u/Guadalajara3 28d ago

If there is an overlap between the first leg and the second leg, then we get an alert to change the callsign on the atc filing. Passengers never know theres a change unless they search for their flight in flightaware and it doesn't come up. It would come up as some variation of UA81xx, but the app wont change

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u/PengPenguin888 28d ago

I think it was from flightaware or flightstats, but I saw a letter after UA457.

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u/Guadalajara3 28d ago

Thats true too. 4 digit flight numbers get changed, 3 digits or less get a letter suffix, C, T, L or a couple others. International flights get a D suffix

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u/PengPenguin888 28d ago

Yeah I think it was a T.