Author Topic: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one  (Read 21553 times)

Offline retro11

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speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« on: August 19, 2010, 06:16:02 PM »
heard this on jfk delv a couple of nights ago, first post so i hope it comes out..



Offline svoynick

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Re: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« Reply #1 on: August 20, 2010, 11:13:47 PM »
You could hear her grin when she answered his "You sound very familiar..."

"Yeeeeah.  Yeah.  That's uh,  sorry..."    Pretty charming, actually; maybe it's just the accent...

alltheway

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Re: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« Reply #2 on: August 21, 2010, 04:21:51 AM »
Speedbird 1174 and Speedbird 11Juliet-heavy are the same  :-P

She says: "yeaah, yeah, eh, sorry, that's the flightnumber (1174) then the callsign is 11Juliet-heavy"

Offline polair911

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Re: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« Reply #3 on: September 08, 2010, 11:13:05 AM »
how come there's the difference?? I thought the call sign for an airliner is usually the same as the flight #

Offline retro11

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Re: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« Reply #4 on: September 08, 2010, 02:52:47 PM »
alphanumeric callsigns are used to avoid confusion with similar airlines flt numbers eg speedbird 174 and say american 174..more widely used in europe than us/canada. cheers retro11

Offline polair911

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Re: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« Reply #5 on: September 08, 2010, 10:42:53 PM »
Learn something everyday!! How does the "Juliet" come about though??

Offline retro11

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Re: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« Reply #6 on: September 09, 2010, 04:02:23 PM »
as far as i am aware the letters are random even though they use the same callsigns every day, a good example is to look at flightradar24.com coverage of uk/europe. right now i see on that site speedbird11m(ba285 heathrow-san francisco) routing down us westcoast fl370...

alltheway

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Re: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« Reply #7 on: September 09, 2010, 05:27:53 PM »
What I think it means is the transponder code. BAW11J fits in the transponder while Speedbird 1174 does not?

Offline buckshot

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Re: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« Reply #8 on: August 14, 2011, 05:05:20 AM »
In europe airspace because of the short distance and delays the same flight number may be used for the daily sector.
Before 9/11 I flew a sector on BA (Speedbird on the flightdeck )London to Rome  the call sign was Speedbird 58 RW (actual flight number was 558)  Aircraft Registration number on the tail.

Offline derekjackson

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Re: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« Reply #9 on: August 14, 2011, 12:05:11 PM »
The British Airways LHR-YYZ flight that arrived in the early afternoon used to be a 777-200 with the callsign Speedbird 9L even though the flight number was always BA093. Once they switched over to using the 767-300 for this route, the callsign went back to Speedbird 93. The early evening flight was always Speedbird 99 even when operated by a 767 as well as the 747. It usually confuses people on flightaware who are trying to track a BA flight only to find their flight seemed to be "cancelled" when in reality you need to search for the new callsign.

Thomas Cook flights are even more fun - they sometimes use two letters and completely different numbers! In order to track those flights on flightaware I need to search by origin and destination to find the new callsign!

Offline Marty Becker

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Re: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« Reply #10 on: August 14, 2011, 12:22:32 PM »
Another example is Swiss from LSZH to KORD.  The flight number is SWR8, the radio callsign is SWR84T and in FlightAware it is SWR84.

Offline twothousandgt

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Re: speedbird are you trying to pull a fast one
« Reply #11 on: February 09, 2012, 01:54:24 AM »
Learn something everyday!! How does the "Juliet" come about though??

Since the UA-CO merger a lot of flights in the 800-900 have been getting alphanumeric ATC callsigns. The 800-900 range at UAL was used mostly for international flights and their connecting domestic legs. Prior to the merger dispatch would often be filing the domestic leg's flight plan with ATC while the international flight was still en-route (and active with ATC). For example, UAL916 would be routed LHR-IAD-SFO and the LHR-IAD leg would use UAL918, but the IAD-SFO leg would get filed as UAL8916. Since the merger it's more common that the LHR-IAD leg is filed as UAL916 and the IAD-SFO leg would be filed as UAL916T (or UAL916J, etc.)

Another example would be what happened last Saturday. UAL965 was scheduled from IAD to ORD. The inbound 67 was late into IAD and eventually they swapped it for a 57 already on the ground instead. Dispatch refiled with the ATC callsign UAL965T.

Offline Casper87

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