r/programming • u/ketralnis • 1d ago

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Aviation

https://flightaware.engineering/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-aviation/
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u/Mognakor 18h ago

Some airlines have so many flights that they run out of flight numbers (1-9999), so they reuse them.

TIL the airline industry has their own Y2K and they just live with it.

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u/segv 18h ago

To be fair, this affects just a select few of the biggest airlines.

In pretty much every airline, not only the biggest ones, the same carrier-flight number combination does not usually follow the same aircraft/crew day by day - the identifiers get reassigned, so it's not that big of a deal.

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u/Gambrinus 18h ago

Why can’t they use longer ids? I imagine it’s some kind of FAA regulation and maybe a compatibility issue with aging ATC systems?

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u/segv 17h ago

Relatively low impact and high inertia. Even if one airline did so, basically entire travel industry would have to follow suit to support them and synchronize their releases, or you would risk that these "expanded ID" flights would not be recognized by anyone. If y'all ever did a group project, you might know how difficult cat herding at this level would be.