Two Fedex flights, both numbered 522, materialized today about 30 miles apart on their way from Cologne to Memphis. One of them was running exactly 24 hours late.
Needless to say, it caused a lot of confusion among the controllers, not to mention danger. Eventually they worked out what the problem was and renumbered one of the flights.
Anyone know if this sort of thing has happened before?
Happens more than you think, usually when a flight gets off schedule (like the above situation). An example of something that might be more typical would be when a flight from, let's say SFO-ORD-LHR (with a plane change at ORD) gets behind on the SFO-ORD leg, and the ORD-LHR (with the same flight number) takes off before the SFO-ORD lands. I don't know what every airline does, but UA tacks a 9 onto the front of the second flight - so in the example I use SFO-ORD would be xxx and ORD-LHR sould be 9xxx.