TapTechNews August 7th news, the technology media viewfromthewing reported this month that the US airline industry is encountering a new 'Y2K'-like problem. The flight number is at most 4 digits, meaning there are at most 9999 flights, but upgrading is extremely difficult.
Taking American Airlines as an example, the number of flights operated every day reaches 6700. In theory, there is relatively abundant use of flight numbers, but in the actual operation process, there are many challenges.
At the Q2 earnings conference call of American Airlines, Brian Znotins, the senior vice president in charge of network planning, expounded the challenges:
There are more than 9999 flights that hope to label their own flight numbers.
Partners will share the use of flight numbers: for example, flights from Doha to India and Pakistan will be sold to partners, and some flights will be sold to Alaska Airlines.
TapTechNews note: The flight number system of American Airlines is built on the system 60 years ago. Similar to the 'Y2K', for the reason of storage and processing, the old system saves data size. The first two letters represent the airline, and the last four digits represent the flight number.
The flight numbers of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines are almost used up, but these giants are helpless in upgrading.
To upgrade the existing system and expand the flight number by one digit to 5 digits is very difficult, and if you want to rebuild a new system, the cost is too high.
The temporary solution of airlines is to assign the same flight number to multiple flights, but ensure that the planes will not be in the air at the same time.