Flight number - any standard?
 

Summary:
There seem to be various different ways of displaying or printing flight
numbers. Is there no international standard for this please?

Detail:
Yesterday I saw off my son and his family on Virgin Atlantic 11:50 flight
from Heathrow to Los Angeles. Then and the during following 12 hours or so
I was assembling 'source material', as I make family DVDs as a hobby.
Apart from the obvious digicam photos and movie clips, I also monitored
flight reports from various web sites.

But this was hindered by inconsistent flight numbering methods that seem
to be used by carriers, airports, web sites, etc. I'm pretty sure I
encountered VS7, VS007, VS 007, VIR 007, VIR007, V7 and more.

In contrast, the aircraft registration format, G-ABCD, doesn't seem to
have changed since my plane-spotting days. Is there any way of determining
that for the above flight, incidentally? I'd like to use my image editor
to get re-touch one of the downloaded images of an Airbus 340-600, which I
established was the plane type.

Any feedback would be much appreciated please.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Flight number - any standard?
 

http://data.flight24.com/flights/vs7/
http://data.flight24.com/airplanes/g-vgoa/
http://www.flightradar24.com/

Flight number - any standard?
 

"Terry Pinnell" wrote in message
...
Summary:
There seem to be various different ways of displaying or printing flight
numbers. Is there no international standard for this please?

Detail:
Yesterday I saw off my son and his family on Virgin Atlantic 11:50 flight
from Heathrow to Los Angeles. Then and the during following 12 hours or so
I was assembling 'source material', as I make family DVDs as a hobby.
Apart from the obvious digicam photos and movie clips, I also monitored
flight reports from various web sites.

But this was hindered by inconsistent flight numbering methods that seem
to be used by carriers, airports, web sites, etc. I'm pretty sure I
encountered VS7, VS007, VS 007, VIR 007, VIR007, V7 and more.

In contrast, the aircraft registration format, G-ABCD, doesn't seem to
have changed since my plane-spotting days. Is there any way of determining
that for the above flight, incidentally? I'd like to use my image editor
to get re-touch one of the downloaded images of an Airbus 340-600, which I
established was the plane type.

Any feedback would be much appreciated please.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Well VS is the IATA two character code for Virgin Atlantic and is used in
reservations and ticketing whilst VIR is the ICAO three letter code for the
same carrier and is more likely to be used in Airport Flight Information
Display systems and Air Traffic Control systems. There will be exceptions
to those "rules" particularly in FIDs because you and I probably recognise
VS rather than VIR.

As for the number element just don't ask. Everybody implements it
differently. I'm surprised you didn't also encounter VS0007. All I can
say is up to 4 numerics and that the last one can be an alpha (e.g. VS007A,
VS7A, VS07A etc is possible). I think IATA and ICAO would probably like
0007 and I seem to remember that inter airline messages are regulated as
0007 but once it gets down to how a programmer decides to display that to
you and me all bets are off.