Originally Posted by csutter

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Originally Posted by DrBernardo


Thought this might be the case - so how come the callsigns are sometimes different from the flight number. Surely that's just confusing for everyone. Why not just Speedbird 285?





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Originally Posted by jowlymonster


Yeah, seems like the automated systems aren't parsing the final letter, or are just doing a "begins with" search.
Any reason the callsign isn't just the flightnumber? Or is that a whole other can of worms?




Crazy as it may sound, the point is actually to reduce confusion - at least for air traffic control and pilots.

Put enough flights in the same airspace and you're bound to get similar callsigns from different flights - to make up a random example: "Speedbird 285" and "Super 258". Those will sound pretty damn similar on the radio and it can and does happen that the wrong flight will pick up instructions intended for someone else. These alphanumeric callsigns are an attempt to reduce callsign similarity between different flights that will at some point get anywhere near each other.