Originally Posted by jrblack
But where is the nose number? You say I need to see out of the gate/boarding area, so I assume it's on the front of the aircraft. But I googled up a bunch of UA 747 pix and can't see any nose numbers on either side of them (but the tail numbers are clearly visible).
The nose numbers are generally around the nose landing gear, in the lower half of the fuselage. As I said, they are four digits, and are painted in fairly small numbers (relative to the tail numbers), so you can only seem them from fairly close (like the windows on a gate area
)
AFAIK, the general format is as follows:
first digit = fleet type (same as the tail number)
second digit = sub-type (to distinguish between, say the different 777 configurations)
last two digits = the aircraft number in the fleet series (same as the tail number)
So if you know the number for your fleet type (i.e. "5" for 757s), then you only need the last two digits...