US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - What do tail numbers mean?

Over the years, I have seen a variety of tail numbers with US paint on them. I would think that since they are running with US livery, that they all should end in US. But that is obviously not the case. Do the last two digits signify the owner of the equipment? If a plan is on lease from another airline/organization it would have something other than US on it? Is there a handy reference to decipher these?

The registration "N" number do not really mean anything as such and neither do the letter(s) following. The letters are often sort of like vanity plates on a car and may or may not denote the carrier (although no carrier is assigned these letters from the feds).

Many of UA's aircraft have N numbers ending with a U. For many years Northwest had their numbers end in "US" for some reason. (This was in the days of Allegheny). For this reason many "US" numbers are not available to US Airways. NW now uses "NW" registrations.

I'm sure someone will post a link to more information.

N is the code letter for United States, Canada has C, etc. etc. That's the only important letter, so it goes first.

After that it's just a jumble of numbers and letters. While almost all US carriers go ###XX, 3 numbers then 2 letters, it doesn't really matter. They just like to make it linear, that's all. A lot if not most european airlines use all letters. It's just the way it goes.

This is evidence of poor data modeling. We spend all this time dwelling over what turns out to be merely an alphanumeric pointer to an entry in a list of aircraft registries.

With US, I seem to recall that the mainline aircraft (the Express aircraft have all sorts of different codes) bear the following two letter codes at the end of Nxxx string:

US (for US Airways)
UW (which was used on some of the airbus aircraft since NW has tied up some of the NxxxUS registrations)
AU (which is the periodic table symbol for Gold - no idea why they went that way, except if it had something to do with Alleghany)
VJ (stood for VistaJet - the marketing name for the ol' DC9-30s - since retired)

Other than when US and PI were integrating fleets do I remember any other codes being used (for PI, they seemed to have used a one letter code "P", and sometimes "N" - at least according to the fleet guide at JetPiedmont.com).

I don't think any of the codes used by US represents the owners of the aircraft (for example then, some would have something to do with RSA, or a bank, or whoever else owns the aircraft)

All the merged aircraft (Piedmont, Empire, PSA, etc.) have been, or were changed, although most of those, other than the Piedmont stuff, are gone. The 737-400's, as an example, were largely made for Piedmont. Not a whole lot of other carriers ever bought that model new. Some years ago, Allegheny bought some used 727-100's from United, and I believe that may have been where the AU started. It was at the beginning of dereg, and I recall an extension of the old Mohawk route to Minneapolis, onward to Phoenix,which was quite a leap for AL. As for the UW's on the Airbuses, I assumed that might have to do with the leasing companies who own most of them. For years, Horizon used ex USAir F-28's, which continued to bear the tail numbers ending in US. While all this is trivia, there is an FAA site which allows you to look up aircraft by tail number. Using this, you can trace all the reported incidents for a particular aircraft, including near misses and shutdowns, etc. If you are a nervous flyer, don't do it. I recall you can access that via the "Landings" website, as well as the FAA. If you are a plane buff, like some of us, it makes for interesting reading on a rainy weekend. Tail numbers are also useful for tracking aircraft locations. Avweb (for 10 bucks a month) gives you realtime acccess to all flights in the air at a given time. Deal guys, who know what the tail numbers are for other guys in the same racket, try to figure out what their rivals are doing by tracking their private planes. This leads to "blocked numbers", just so you can't do that, as well as the famous RJR deal, where the eventual winning bidder actually sent their real aircraft to a phony destination, while flying to HQ in a chartered jet, and made the deal while everybody else slept.

AU was once the OAG/IATA 2 letter abbreviator for USAir. US was held by a branch of the Military I believe.

Some of the number sets indicate aircraft types as well:

100 series for the A320 and A321
200 series for the departed 737-200
300 and 500 series for the 737-300
400 series and high 700 series for the 737-400
600-655 (est) for 757 and 767
670+ for A330
700 series for A319.
800-850 MD-80
851-899 F100

This is from memory and I may be off by a couple but this appears to be the general scheme of things.

I hope this is helpful.



------------------
IT'S THE FARES, STUPID!!

Regards,

Art at ISP

On the express side, some Piedmont Dash-8s are NxxxHA for Henson Aviation and the Mesa ERJs are N8xxMJ.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Art234:
AU was once the OAG/IATA 2 letter abbreviator for USAir. US was held by a branch of the Military I believe.
</font>

Hi Art --

I respect your postings both here and on usaviation.com, but I beg to differ with this one. I was working for AL/PI at the time of the merger and can promise you that AL lobbied hard to get their 2 letter IATA designator changed from AL to US prior to the merger in 1989. At no point did US flights operate under an AU code. I have some old travel agency education folders somewhere on file in the basement (getting musty!)explaining the booking code change from AL to US.

Otherwise, your posting is exceptionally accurate!

Others my find it interesting to note the older DC9s in Northwest's fleet....these birds are 30 to 36 years old by now and often carry the original registration number of the first airline to fly them. For example, you'll encounter N89S (formerly with SouthernAirways), and any number of DC930s and -50s ending in E or EA (all from Eastern) and then plenty of DC9s with NC at the end.....yep, all of these ancient aircraft flew with North Central!

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a tremendous amount more wet-leasing of aircraft for irregular operations and often seasonal ops. That got wild with Pan Am flying KLM 747s from Miami to LAX in February, etc. Then, it went back to AMS with KLM in May!!

NW 9's with 9660 numbers were from Hughes Airwest. I regularly flew them in the early 70's. I'm still sticking with my recollection about the AU series. Those were the 727-100's from United that went to Allegheny. The designator subsequently was extended to other aircraft types in the fleet.

I stand corrected. I did mention that it was IIRC, but I was wrong. AL was indeed the code used prior to US.

By the way, in addition to the tail numbers posted above, the 900 series was DC-9's and ended in VJ for Vista Jets.

Thanks for the correction and the kind words.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by sbtinme:
Hi Art --

I respect your postings both here and on usaviation.com, but I beg to differ with this one. I was working for AL/PI at the time of the merger and can promise you that AL lobbied hard to get their 2 letter IATA designator changed from AL to US prior to the merger in 1989. At no point did US flights operate under an AU code. I have some old travel agency education folders somewhere on file in the basement (getting musty!)explaining the booking code change from AL to US.

Otherwise, your posting is exceptionally accurate!

Others my find it interesting to note the older DC9s in Northwest's fleet....these birds are 30 to 36 years old by now and often carry the original registration number of the first airline to fly them. For example, you'll encounter N89S (formerly with SouthernAirways), and any number of DC930s and -50s ending in E or EA (all from Eastern) and then plenty of DC9s with NC at the end.....yep, all of these ancient aircraft flew with North Central!

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a tremendous amount more wet-leasing of aircraft for irregular operations and often seasonal ops. That got wild with Pan Am flying KLM 747s from Miami to LAX in February, etc. Then, it went back to AMS with KLM in May!!

</font>



------------------
IT'S THE FARES, STUPID!!

Regards,

Art at ISP

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Art234:
US was held by a branch of the Military I believe.
</font>

Art, you are right on this one. When the merger occurred, US was held by one of the Air Force airlift commands. I think a bunch of horse trading occurred to get the US designator to our little airline. That required the military to get another designator which I think they got or swapped with someone else to get their preferred code that I cannot remember what it is.

Maybe I'll google this to see if the story still exists.

I believe there is also 1 B757 using the VJ code as well.

There does not have to be any rhyme or reason to the registration codes of aircraft...CO's random numbers and NW's wide variety in their DC-9 fleet spring to mind...

N674UW

The numbers on aircraft of those carriers are different because of equipment which came with merged carriers. Continental had some with NY (New York Air), FL (the original Frontier), PE (People), EA (they took Eastern A-300 aircraft after it folded), and MC (Muse Air-Lamar Muse was a founder of Southwest - later Transtar)on a bunch of MD 80's they got from a leasing company. Northwest had NC (North Central), RW (Hughes Airwest), RC (Republic), and S (Southern). Occasionally you will see aircraft with in Irish designator (EI instead if N). These are from a big leasing company based in that country, and are usually only temporarily in various fleets.

Northwest and Delta seem to have a policy of not re-registering their planes when they are acquired secondhand. I understand this saves some money, and it has the side effect of detailing the history of an airplane regardless of it's paint scheme.
NW has N and NC from North Central, RW from Hughes Airwest, RC from Republic, S from Southern, E and EA from Eastern, and L from Delta. They have been using NW for new aircraft in recent years, but have also used NA, and NB on the A319's. I also noted one of the newest A320's has tail number N375NC, which revives the North Central registration
almost 20 years after the merger. Evidently
375NW and NA were unavailable. NW planes used the US reg for many years since NW was a US flag carrier to the Orient.
Delta boasts planes with W and WA regs for Western, and WP for their ex-Western Pacific 733's.

Best tail number of all: N1KE which belongs to the corporate jet of...


NIKE

Some more really cool tail numbers:

26000
27000
28000
29000

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by SealBeach:
Best tail number of all: N1KE which belongs to the corporate jet of...


NIKE</font>
Wow, a Gulfstream V! That's a lot of shoes that they have to sell!

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by JS:
Some more really cool tail numbers:

26000
27000
28000
29000</font>

26000 was the 707 (really a C-137) that took JFK to Dallas and brought the body and President Johnson back as Air Force 1.

27000 was it's replacement (another 707/C-137) as Air Force 1.

28000 and 29000 are the two VC-25s (converted 747-200s) that replaced the 707s as Air Force 1.

Brtish Airways had one on a jumbo 747 they inherited from BCAL. They use G instead of N over there. It was G-HUGE

Also see http://www.elliottaviation.com/wavelink/1998q2/wavart09A.asp for a discussion of:

N7UP (soda, anyone?)
N9X (used to be a phone company)
N643CR (reference to a baseball play)

and others...

A few more that spring to mind...

N4GA AOPA's Cessna Citation CJ1
N4KU University of Kansas King Air

N674UW

------------------
Although Im still N674UW by posting name, think of me from now on as "N923FR"...