4 ms·

Wouldn't the easy solution be to use two sets of letters for IATA coded flights for the same airline? Something like "DL1234" and "DZ1234" for Delta? I know a

Wouldn't the easy solution be to use two sets of letters for IATA coded flights for the same airline? Something like "DL1234" and "DZ1234" for Delta? I know a lot of the two-letter codes are claimed too, and I'm sure there must be some reason this wouldn't work OK, but it would seem like they they would each have at least one code left over from the various airlines they've acquired over the years? If an American Airlines regional flight started with "TW1234" again, for example, I don't think it would break the world.

1970-01-01 2y ago
This solution is so simple it's what they will do. But only after spending millions researching every other solution.
- ronsor 2y ago
  And by "researching" we mean overpaying consultants who will do absolutely nothing useful.
  - Dban1 2y ago
    i wanna be a consultant
    - poopsmithe 2y ago
      you can be a consultant!
    - hiddencost 2y ago
      It's honestly really unpleasant spending that much of your life hustling people. I quit after a year because I hated having to hustle to make payroll.
    - trustno2 2y ago
      You can be, the consultancies are hiring. But you need to up your PowerPoint skills.
      - xattt 2y ago
        Half-serious, but where do I get started?
        trustno2 2y ago
        https://www.mckinsey.com/careers https://www.mckinsey.com/careers
jki275 2y ago
It almost certainly would completely break thousands of functions that have those magic letters hard coded into them in fortran, cobol, C or whatever. You might even find that clever people back in the 70s used other ways of representing those letters so you can't even search for them. I've worked on codebases like this -- I've seen it take a team of engineers years to add a single digit to an ID number in a multi-million LOC mixed language codebase that was written in the 60s. It's not that it can't be done, it's that it costs millions of dollars and takes years and you're never sure it's actually done because nobody has ever written a single test for the system and if you tried that would take years as well.
- kgen 2y ago
  But lots of airlines have come and gone or merged over the years and these systems would have already had to deal with new airlines codes?
  - jki275 2y ago
    Probably true. But their own systems internally almost certainly have those magic letters hard coded in thousands of places.
    - TSUTiger 2y ago
      100% facts. They do. In prior roles, I've worked at 2 of the largest US airlines that have gone through mergers. There are lots of hard-coded letters in decades-old code that help identify what's mainline, regional, and OA (other airline). We're talking everything from reservations (booking) to revenue recognition (flight departure). It would be no simple feat to upgrade the tech stack. Hell, some of the mergers are still lingering within the systems because airlines wanted to complete it quickly for the passengers. The backend, however, has band-aids all over the place.
- pixl97 2y ago
  And there is so much functional testing that needs to occur on systems boundaries. I'm just thinking of crazy things that happen often enough like luggage getting put on the wrong flight and shipped via another carrier via agreement.
dataflow 2y ago
That's not such a great solution, it kicks the can down the road and it's super confusing to humans to have the same airline be represented different ways.
- petesergeant 2y ago
  It's common in Asia, with regional affiliates like the different AirAsia, LionAir, and VietJet companies having virtually identical branding but different flight prefixes.
  - konimex 2y ago
    I can confirm for AirAsia and Lion Group, and IIRC Ryanair also do this with their UK subsidiary with different flight prefixes and different aircraft registration numbers.
- kmoser 2y ago
  As a traveler, I already know the airline name because it's printed on my boarding pass, so I don't really care what two-letter prefix they use; to me it's just another part of the opaque handle they call a flight number.
  - dataflow 2y ago
    If only things were always that simple.
alwa 2y ago
I get the appeal (and the 60 years of accumulated technical skeletons, and the business and legal necessity) of keeping all of the airline’s segments coded as the same carrier and notionally able to connect to one another. I do wonder, though: in your scheme with a notional “DL” range and a notional “DZ” range, would it be feasible to partition the real-world flight networks in a way that keeps all the tickets as “same-carrier” according to the legacy logic? That is, could you partition the flight network such that nobody has purchased or ever will purchase a single ticket that spans flights from both ranges? Assuming maybe that a significant number of “backbone” flights (e.g. between hubs) can themselves be “codeshared” between the new DL and DZ ranges. If so, how much new flight number space could you buy, considering the tradeoff between “codeshare all the new DL/DZ flights” and “free up the most new flight numbers”?

1970-01-01 2y ago

This solution is so simple it's what they will do. But only after spending millions researching every other solution.

ronsor 2y ago
And by "researching" we mean overpaying consultants who will do absolutely nothing useful.
- Dban1 2y ago
  i wanna be a consultant
  - poopsmithe 2y ago
    you can be a consultant!
  - hiddencost 2y ago
    It's honestly really unpleasant spending that much of your life hustling people. I quit after a year because I hated having to hustle to make payroll.
  - trustno2 2y ago
    You can be, the consultancies are hiring. But you need to up your PowerPoint skills.
    - xattt 2y ago
      Half-serious, but where do I get started?
      - trustno2 2y ago
        https://www.mckinsey.com/careers https://www.mckinsey.com/careers

jki275 2y ago

It almost certainly would completely break thousands of functions that have those magic letters hard coded into them in fortran, cobol, C or whatever. You might even find that clever people back in the 70s used other ways of representing those letters so you can't even search for them. I've worked on codebases like this -- I've seen it take a team of engineers years to add a single digit to an ID number in a multi-million LOC mixed language codebase that was written in the 60s. It's not that it can't be done, it's that it costs millions of dollars and takes years and you're never sure it's actually done because nobody has ever written a single test for the system and if you tried that would take years as well.

kgen 2y ago
But lots of airlines have come and gone or merged over the years and these systems would have already had to deal with new airlines codes?
- jki275 2y ago
  Probably true. But their own systems internally almost certainly have those magic letters hard coded in thousands of places.
  - TSUTiger 2y ago
    100% facts. They do. In prior roles, I've worked at 2 of the largest US airlines that have gone through mergers. There are lots of hard-coded letters in decades-old code that help identify what's mainline, regional, and OA (other airline). We're talking everything from reservations (booking) to revenue recognition (flight departure). It would be no simple feat to upgrade the tech stack. Hell, some of the mergers are still lingering within the systems because airlines wanted to complete it quickly for the passengers. The backend, however, has band-aids all over the place.
pixl97 2y ago
And there is so much functional testing that needs to occur on systems boundaries. I'm just thinking of crazy things that happen often enough like luggage getting put on the wrong flight and shipped via another carrier via agreement.

dataflow 2y ago

That's not such a great solution, it kicks the can down the road and it's super confusing to humans to have the same airline be represented different ways.

petesergeant 2y ago
It's common in Asia, with regional affiliates like the different AirAsia, LionAir, and VietJet companies having virtually identical branding but different flight prefixes.
- konimex 2y ago
  I can confirm for AirAsia and Lion Group, and IIRC Ryanair also do this with their UK subsidiary with different flight prefixes and different aircraft registration numbers.
kmoser 2y ago
As a traveler, I already know the airline name because it's printed on my boarding pass, so I don't really care what two-letter prefix they use; to me it's just another part of the opaque handle they call a flight number.
- dataflow 2y ago
  If only things were always that simple.

alwa 2y ago

I get the appeal (and the 60 years of accumulated technical skeletons, and the business and legal necessity) of keeping all of the airline’s segments coded as the same carrier and notionally able to connect to one another. I do wonder, though: in your scheme with a notional “DL” range and a notional “DZ” range, would it be feasible to partition the real-world flight networks in a way that keeps all the tickets as “same-carrier” according to the legacy logic? That is, could you partition the flight network such that nobody has purchased or ever will purchase a single ticket that spans flights from both ranges? Assuming maybe that a significant number of “backbone” flights (e.g. between hubs) can themselves be “codeshared” between the new DL and DZ ranges. If so, how much new flight number space could you buy, considering the tradeoff between “codeshare all the new DL/DZ flights” and “free up the most new flight numbers”?