Originally Posted by
pax britanica
Just an idea but is it possible that European Airlines flying to USA had to abopt Flight numbers because most US airliners had numeric and alpha numeric registrations and FAA maybe didnt recognise call signs with no numbers.
Just a thought because it does seem like airlines in Europe used both Flight number and registrations at the same time depending on the destination??
I don’t think so. Using flight numbers came about because of the introduction of stored FPLS. Registrations could not be used for these as the a/c operating the service changed from day to day - unless your airline only had one aero plane.