Originally Posted by
SFO_FT
Indeed. Why have flight numbers at all? Origin, destination, and sked Dep time is all that's needed. ;-)
I see your 'smiley face' so I realize you're just having some fun, but from the serious operational side of things, when there's 50 planes all buzzing around ATL airspace coming and going it makes it real hard to for ATC to have a meaningful discussion with us if everybody's callsign is simply "Delta". In fact, from the pointy end of the plane, we get irritated at marketing when they choose too many flight numbers that sound similar headed into a particular airport at the same time. It leads to big trouble on the radios when Delta 505 and Delta 509 are speaking to the same controller on a busy frequency.