Do airlines just assign the numbers they feel like using to identify a flight?
Yes and No!
Part of the “yes” is that the airline’s wise guys can decide to put a policy that their flight numbers should be this or that. Part of the “no” is that there are a lot of international rules/conventions/agreements that flight numbers should be this or that. Let us titillate your curiosity on this topic!
They’re not all numbers
As you would have noticed, flight numbers – at least for commercial flights – are actually not just numbers literally. There also are letters – usually two letters – before the digits. Or didn’t you notice that? While the numbers may have been choices of the airlines, the letters may not, can not and should not be changed, even by the airlines themselves! Examples would be PR300, JL742, QF019, SQ071, EK333 (international flights from Manila) and PR847, 5J577, 2P022, 6K919, DG011 (domestic flights from Manila). Aren’t you curious what those letters are?
Airline Codes
Well, the first two letters are actually the “two-letter-airline-codes” of various airlines. Yes, those are part of their identities and cannot be changed that easily. It is permanent and known the whole world over. But wait, we said “two-letter-airline-codes”! So what about the 5J, 2P and 6K? They’re not all letters, right?! Don’t panic. Those number-and-letter combinations are still referred to in the airline industry as the “two-letter-airline-codes”! But why? Well, with only 26 letters in the alphabet, there can only be a certain number of “two-letter” combinations, and apparently, the airline industry has ran out of such two-letter combinations so they now shifted to “letter-and-number” or “number-and-letter” combinations so that new airliners can also have their “two-letter-airline-codes”. Ayan… magulo ba?! For your peace of mind, when you see a flight number, the first-two characters mean the airline’s identity.
The above codes are actually interpreted as:
PR – Philippine Airlines
JL – Japan Airlines
QF – Qantas Airways
SQ – Singapore Airlines
EK – Emirates Air
5J – Cebu Pacific air
2P – Air Philippines
6K – Asian Spirit
DG – Seair
You will notice that the codes with numbers are newer airliners. You will notice too that the older the airline, the nearer the combination of the two letters to the name of the airliner. You want more examples?
Some easy and obvious codes:
NW – Northwest Airlines
BA – British Airways
KL – KLM, THE Royal Dutch Airline – whatever!
AF – Air France
AA – American Airlines
And here are some tricky codes:
MS – Egypt Air
MU – China Eastern Airlines
XZ – East Air
QV – Lao Airlines
MI – Silkair
Now you are smiling! If you are a Filipino and have the time to read them all, you might even be grinning with some codes like those of Air Lithuania, TAM Regional Airways and Air Austral. Then again, you can also research and tell us what happened to L7, do you know? Before we leave this topic, note that these two-letter-codes are not just the only airline identifiers unique to each of them. There are others more but those will probably appear in other articles within this blog.
The real numbers
So, from the topic above, we deduce that the real or actual flight numbers are those that follow the “two-letter-airline-codes”. Are we correct? Yes, we are, so far. That means, if we see a PR300 that is a flight from Manila to Hong Kong every morning, we should not see a PAL flight going anywhere else bearing the PR300 for a flight number nor should we see an afternoon PAL flight labeled as PR300 – unless the real PR300 got into some delay and is leaving in the afternoon instead of 8AM. Ah, and by the way, the flight coming back is not anymore PR300 – but that’s another topic below. Alright?! Okay!
Aside from the “two-letter-airline-code”, how many numbers are the actual flight numbers? The firm answer is Three Digits – with some exceptions hehe. Firm answer daw o?! Oh exceptions! By international convention via air transport associations like the IATA, they have agreed that flight numbers should be three digits aside from the two letter airline code. If an airline wants to call its flight a “flight number one” then the digits should be 001 – of course preceded by the two-digit airline code (although for marketing and sales purposes many airlines stick to just the single or double digits like flight number 1 or flight number 99 – which is alright anyway). Thus, in essence, an airline’s flight number should (usually) contain five alpha-numeric characters as in PR300 or QF019 above.
What about the exceptions? Well, also as agreed by the industry, some flight numbers will have four digits after the two-letter-code. These are usually the non-regular flights – those that are not perennially existent like chartered flights. Most common to see these flight numbers are at Clark and Subic (like OZ7085, do you know which airline that is?). Airlines will at times provide replacement flights to cancelled or severely delayed flights. To distinguish them from the usual flights, digits are commonly added. Example, if PR300 (a daily flight to Hong Kong) gets delayed today and rescheduled to depart tomorrow, there will be two such flights named PR300 tomorrow. It will confuse everyone from passengers to airline and airport workers. So the delayed flight will perhaps be renamed to PR3000. There are even other nitty-gritties on these four digit flight numbers – like 0001 to 4999 will be regional flights while those from 5000 to 9999 will be code-shared flights (a single flight being sold by two or more airlines). Let’s not bother about those anyway!
You will be interested to note that what we are talking about here, are actually “rules” and “regulations” that CAN be disregarded by any or all of them who made these hehe!
North and south matters
Curious why some flights have odd numbers and some have even numbers? Also curious why some flights are just a digit away from the other? Well, there is also an explanation and it is not just the whim of the airline but as in most of the above, it is likewise via international convention amongst airlines – that can be thwarted if need be!
Did you notice that ‘even’ flight numbers (PR300, JL742 etc) are flights going towards the north? And did you notice that ‘odd’ number flights (QF019, EK333, 5J577, etc) are those heading south? Those are not by mere coincidence. Those are required of all airliners in the world! Why so? Why bother? Aren’t they just trying to be cute? We might actually readily say yes that all of them airlines are just trying to make an impression. In reality, it’s not at all. Those conventions are critically needed by the air traffic controllers to be able to immediately identify the direction of a flight by just the mere mention of a flight number. With the thousands of aircraft flying the skies at any given time, that convention would really help. If you don’t believe so, try becoming an air traffic controller. Unless you don’t know who air traffic controllers are!
How about East and West? Well, in countries or regions with a very dense number of flights between cities – such that the origin and destination might be on the very same distance from the equator, they use East and West. But it’s easy as changing North with East and South with West. So, if the flight is eastbound it will be an even numbered flight, while if it’s westbound it will be odd numbered. In the Philippines, it has yet to happen that you have two cities exactly on the same latitudinal coordinates! So let us be happy with north and south!
Now let’s go to the “a digit away”. Those would usually be the return flights. Thus, if PR300 is the morning flight from Manila to Hong Kong, PR301 is the returning flight of the same plane from Hong Kong to Manila. Similarly if JL742 is the Japan Airlines flight going to Tokyo, it will have come-in as JL741 from Tokyo.
Prestige and Marketing
Other than the above, things about an airline’s flight numbers would usually dwell on the whims of their marketing and sales people. Examples are, “the lower the number, the more important an earner is the flight”; “those that start with 8 are lucky” and so on.
Bottomline
For us the mere paying public, it will be enough to know that the first two characters of our flight numbers would mean the airline that we are taking and the rest can be a mambo-jumbo of numbers only worth remembering if we want to take note of our best choices on when to fly. Hey, don’t let me see you at the Centennial Airport if your flight number starts with a “5J”, okay?! If that happened, I will ask everyone to laugh at you!
And by the way, my favorites (and therefore mostly availed of) are PR857 and PR866 as the departure and arrival times are convenient for me (less traffic). Unfortunately, many of my feng-shui addict friends tell me I should change those since in any of those flights, if I add the digits, they all correspond to the number 2 – which they say, is not very lucky. Hmmm! I will think about that! How about yours?!
So, enjoy your flight?! Please?!
Yes and No!
Part of the “yes” is that the airline’s wise guys can decide to put a policy that their flight numbers should be this or that. Part of the “no” is that there are a lot of international rules/conventions/agreements that flight numbers should be this or that. Let us titillate your curiosity on this topic!
They’re not all numbers
As you would have noticed, flight numbers – at least for commercial flights – are actually not just numbers literally. There also are letters – usually two letters – before the digits. Or didn’t you notice that? While the numbers may have been choices of the airlines, the letters may not, can not and should not be changed, even by the airlines themselves! Examples would be PR300, JL742, QF019, SQ071, EK333 (international flights from Manila) and PR847, 5J577, 2P022, 6K919, DG011 (domestic flights from Manila). Aren’t you curious what those letters are?
Airline Codes
Well, the first two letters are actually the “two-letter-airline-codes” of various airlines. Yes, those are part of their identities and cannot be changed that easily. It is permanent and known the whole world over. But wait, we said “two-letter-airline-codes”! So what about the 5J, 2P and 6K? They’re not all letters, right?! Don’t panic. Those number-and-letter combinations are still referred to in the airline industry as the “two-letter-airline-codes”! But why? Well, with only 26 letters in the alphabet, there can only be a certain number of “two-letter” combinations, and apparently, the airline industry has ran out of such two-letter combinations so they now shifted to “letter-and-number” or “number-and-letter” combinations so that new airliners can also have their “two-letter-airline-codes”. Ayan… magulo ba?! For your peace of mind, when you see a flight number, the first-two characters mean the airline’s identity.
The above codes are actually interpreted as:
PR – Philippine Airlines
JL – Japan Airlines
QF – Qantas Airways
SQ – Singapore Airlines
EK – Emirates Air
5J – Cebu Pacific air
2P – Air Philippines
6K – Asian Spirit
DG – Seair
You will notice that the codes with numbers are newer airliners. You will notice too that the older the airline, the nearer the combination of the two letters to the name of the airliner. You want more examples?
Some easy and obvious codes:
NW – Northwest Airlines
BA – British Airways
KL – KLM, THE Royal Dutch Airline – whatever!
AF – Air France
AA – American Airlines
And here are some tricky codes:
MS – Egypt Air
MU – China Eastern Airlines
XZ – East Air
QV – Lao Airlines
MI – Silkair
Now you are smiling! If you are a Filipino and have the time to read them all, you might even be grinning with some codes like those of Air Lithuania, TAM Regional Airways and Air Austral. Then again, you can also research and tell us what happened to L7, do you know? Before we leave this topic, note that these two-letter-codes are not just the only airline identifiers unique to each of them. There are others more but those will probably appear in other articles within this blog.
The real numbers
So, from the topic above, we deduce that the real or actual flight numbers are those that follow the “two-letter-airline-codes”. Are we correct? Yes, we are, so far. That means, if we see a PR300 that is a flight from Manila to Hong Kong every morning, we should not see a PAL flight going anywhere else bearing the PR300 for a flight number nor should we see an afternoon PAL flight labeled as PR300 – unless the real PR300 got into some delay and is leaving in the afternoon instead of 8AM. Ah, and by the way, the flight coming back is not anymore PR300 – but that’s another topic below. Alright?! Okay!
Aside from the “two-letter-airline-code”, how many numbers are the actual flight numbers? The firm answer is Three Digits – with some exceptions hehe. Firm answer daw o?! Oh exceptions! By international convention via air transport associations like the IATA, they have agreed that flight numbers should be three digits aside from the two letter airline code. If an airline wants to call its flight a “flight number one” then the digits should be 001 – of course preceded by the two-digit airline code (although for marketing and sales purposes many airlines stick to just the single or double digits like flight number 1 or flight number 99 – which is alright anyway). Thus, in essence, an airline’s flight number should (usually) contain five alpha-numeric characters as in PR300 or QF019 above.
What about the exceptions? Well, also as agreed by the industry, some flight numbers will have four digits after the two-letter-code. These are usually the non-regular flights – those that are not perennially existent like chartered flights. Most common to see these flight numbers are at Clark and Subic (like OZ7085, do you know which airline that is?). Airlines will at times provide replacement flights to cancelled or severely delayed flights. To distinguish them from the usual flights, digits are commonly added. Example, if PR300 (a daily flight to Hong Kong) gets delayed today and rescheduled to depart tomorrow, there will be two such flights named PR300 tomorrow. It will confuse everyone from passengers to airline and airport workers. So the delayed flight will perhaps be renamed to PR3000. There are even other nitty-gritties on these four digit flight numbers – like 0001 to 4999 will be regional flights while those from 5000 to 9999 will be code-shared flights (a single flight being sold by two or more airlines). Let’s not bother about those anyway!
You will be interested to note that what we are talking about here, are actually “rules” and “regulations” that CAN be disregarded by any or all of them who made these hehe!
North and south matters
Curious why some flights have odd numbers and some have even numbers? Also curious why some flights are just a digit away from the other? Well, there is also an explanation and it is not just the whim of the airline but as in most of the above, it is likewise via international convention amongst airlines – that can be thwarted if need be!
Did you notice that ‘even’ flight numbers (PR300, JL742 etc) are flights going towards the north? And did you notice that ‘odd’ number flights (QF019, EK333, 5J577, etc) are those heading south? Those are not by mere coincidence. Those are required of all airliners in the world! Why so? Why bother? Aren’t they just trying to be cute? We might actually readily say yes that all of them airlines are just trying to make an impression. In reality, it’s not at all. Those conventions are critically needed by the air traffic controllers to be able to immediately identify the direction of a flight by just the mere mention of a flight number. With the thousands of aircraft flying the skies at any given time, that convention would really help. If you don’t believe so, try becoming an air traffic controller. Unless you don’t know who air traffic controllers are!
How about East and West? Well, in countries or regions with a very dense number of flights between cities – such that the origin and destination might be on the very same distance from the equator, they use East and West. But it’s easy as changing North with East and South with West. So, if the flight is eastbound it will be an even numbered flight, while if it’s westbound it will be odd numbered. In the Philippines, it has yet to happen that you have two cities exactly on the same latitudinal coordinates! So let us be happy with north and south!
Now let’s go to the “a digit away”. Those would usually be the return flights. Thus, if PR300 is the morning flight from Manila to Hong Kong, PR301 is the returning flight of the same plane from Hong Kong to Manila. Similarly if JL742 is the Japan Airlines flight going to Tokyo, it will have come-in as JL741 from Tokyo.
Prestige and Marketing
Other than the above, things about an airline’s flight numbers would usually dwell on the whims of their marketing and sales people. Examples are, “the lower the number, the more important an earner is the flight”; “those that start with 8 are lucky” and so on.
Bottomline
For us the mere paying public, it will be enough to know that the first two characters of our flight numbers would mean the airline that we are taking and the rest can be a mambo-jumbo of numbers only worth remembering if we want to take note of our best choices on when to fly. Hey, don’t let me see you at the Centennial Airport if your flight number starts with a “5J”, okay?! If that happened, I will ask everyone to laugh at you!
And by the way, my favorites (and therefore mostly availed of) are PR857 and PR866 as the departure and arrival times are convenient for me (less traffic). Unfortunately, many of my feng-shui addict friends tell me I should change those since in any of those flights, if I add the digits, they all correspond to the number 2 – which they say, is not very lucky. Hmmm! I will think about that! How about yours?!
So, enjoy your flight?! Please?!
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