JanetFlight

Hi All...according a recently email received at my job from IATA's codes division, since 1st October were some deletions, mainly by no longer and deceased airlines/operators, the few reamaining in good health only changing from one code to another one.
However one of them left me very curious, cause AFAIK MON is still using it as ZB, however as IATA stated (maybe there is an error, who knows), on the 5 pages of deletions, supressions and changes, the last one its as follows:
(bottom of the page)

htp://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/9/91313989.png
(it misses a T in http cause the server cannot allow me)

Tanx in advance...JF.

Skipness One Echo

Why did they ever swap OM for ZB in the first place?

DaveReidUK

I don't know, but clearly they are still using ZB.

It's either a tribute to the longevity of legacy airline computer systems, or an indication that aviation is stuck in the past (depending on how you look at it) that many years after 2-character IATA codes were supposed to have been phased out and replaced by 3-letter ICAO ones, the former still survive and are in daily use by most airlines.

Having said that, I see that the Gatwick departure board shows some Monarch flights as ZB and others as MON - anyone know why ?

Tight Seat

ZB are scheduled flights, whilst MON are our charter/adhoc offerings .

Within the airline itself we always refer to our scheduled routes as ZBs, i.e. " all I've got on my roster this month is ZBs"

chip butty

OM was used by Monarch until it started to operate scheduled routes, up until that time it was a 'controlled duplicate' 2 letter code with Mongolian Airlines, but since they were starting scheduled routes that needed to be loaded in GDS's etc they needed a different 2 letter designator, and ZB was the next one available

Skipness One Echo

Thanks! I always wondered....

Peter47

Going totally off topic (its Friday evening) on the subject of codes, easyJet seem to refuse to use their IATA code which is a shame as I'm no Gary Powers and will never fly in a supersonic spy plane so its the only way I can claim to have flown in a U2 aircraft. Interestingly enough the OAG guide does use the code, but I assume that they can't cope with 3 letter ICAO codes. At least they don't use four letter ICAO airport codes.

DaveReidUK

In the context of ACARS, where two-character airline codes are the norm, EasyJet do use U2 rather than EZY.

But console yourself with the thought that U-2 pilots don't fly in a supersonic spy plane either.