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Old Oct 9, 2019, 4:11 pm
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Flight Number Retirement for accidents, etc.
It is usually standard practice that airlines will retire flight numbers for accident flights with fatalities. But with all the mergers do they still not use the flight number of a airline now merged into their system.
American is made of of many airlines through merger. US Airways accidents 1493 and 405 don’t see numbers used but PSA 182 that number is active.
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Old Oct 9, 2019, 5:30 pm
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American Airlines Flight 191 was possibly the most horrific accident in the USA.

On May 25, 1979, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 operating this flight was taking off from (ORD) runway 32R when it crashed into the ground. All 258 passengers and 13 crew on board were killed, along with two people on the ground. With 273 fatalities, it is the deadliest aviation accident to have occurred in the United States.
There is no AA 191.
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Old Oct 9, 2019, 5:49 pm
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AA 1 has had three fatal crashes -- one in the jet age, and two during the prop era. AA 1 remains AA's JFK-LAX morning nonstop. Hard to imagine that that flight number will ever be retired.
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Last edited by guv1976; Mar 29, 2023 at 11:57 pm
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Old Oct 9, 2019, 6:00 pm
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191 was also the flight number for the DL L1011 crash in DFW in 1985. I believe this flight number has never been used at Delta.
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Old Oct 9, 2019, 7:09 pm
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I don’t believe AA uses flight 427, which was the USAir crash from ORD-PIT. I was living in Pittsburgh at the time and in grade school. The father of a girl in my class was on that flight.
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Old Oct 9, 2019, 7:35 pm
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It also doesn't look like they use 1549 (or haven't so since 2015) so I think its safe to say that any news worthy flight number will probably be retired.
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Old Oct 9, 2019, 7:38 pm
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Flight numbers 11 and 77 are obviously retired.
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Old Oct 10, 2019, 1:18 pm
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Originally Posted by skylady
Flight numbers 11 and 77 are obviously retired.
This is rather odd......(not your post, flightaware reporting AAL TLS-HER (France to Greece) June 22, 2019
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL11
77 shows STL-AUS in 2002. https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL77
427 shows DFW-ONT in Aug 2015 (The US Air crash was in Sept 1994)
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Old Oct 10, 2019, 8:40 pm
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Originally Posted by mvoight
This is rather odd......(not your post, flightaware reporting AAL TLS-HER (France to Greece) June 22, 2019
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL11
77 shows STL-AUS in 2002. https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL77
427 shows DFW-ONT in Aug 2015 (The US Air crash was in Sept 1994)
the 427 flight isn’t that odd, since the original flight was USAir and even though the merger was announced well in advance, the US/AA certificates didn’t actually merge until Oct 2015, and in Aug 2015 they were still on separate certs. US had retired the flight number, but obviously AA wouldn’t have done so if not for the merger.

Not sure what the deal is with FlightAware for 11 and 77, though.
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Old Oct 11, 2019, 5:07 am
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AA 191 gets a lot of play here and on aviation boards, but AA 587 killed nearly the same number of people and is rarely mentioned.
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Old Oct 11, 2019, 9:55 am
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Every Dominican remembers AA587. It was extremely tragic.
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Old Oct 11, 2019, 10:10 am
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Originally Posted by razzaba
the 427 flight isn’t that odd, since the original flight was USAir and even though the merger was announced well in advance, the US/AA certificates didn’t actually merge until Oct 2015, and in Aug 2015 they were still on separate certs. US had retired the flight number, but obviously AA wouldn’t have done so if not for the merger.

Not sure what the deal is with FlightAware for 11 and 77, though.
I mean the routing for AAL11 shown on FlightAware was odd (TLS - HER), since AA never had scheduled service for that routing, and the flight number doesn't fall into the code share grouping
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Old Mar 25, 2020, 6:01 pm
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Retired Flight Numbers
I thought it was common practice that airlines retire flight numbers for flight accident flights especially where there are fatalities. I see 625 and 383 are in use. When was this practice changed.
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Old Mar 25, 2020, 9:07 pm
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Originally Posted by buckeyefanflyer
I thought it was common practice that airlines retire flight numbers for flight accident flights especially where there are fatalities. I see 625 and 383 are in use. When was this practice changed.
It hasn't changed but airlines are selective in which accidents make the permanently retired table. The most notorious/deadly ones and more recent ones being most likely to be disused.

I had to look up both AAL383 and 625. I was aware of the AA crash at CVG (and the TWA flight that hit the very same hill) but never would have remembered (or known) its flight number. Similarly, I was vaguely aware of the AA B-727 overrun at STT but never knew it by flight number.

AA331 is an active flight number but AA1420 appears to be retired.
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Old Mar 29, 2023, 11:48 pm
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Originally Posted by mvoight
This is rather odd......(not your post, flightaware reporting AAL TLS-HER (France to Greece) June 22, 2019
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL11
77 shows STL-AUS in 2002. https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL77
427 shows DFW-ONT in Aug 2015 (The US Air crash was in Sept 1994)

And apparently United 93 flew across the breadth of the United Kingdom in June 2015.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/...0150615/0941ZZ

What gives? Was that an actual flight or perhaps a hiccup by Flightaware?
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