Air France ATC Callsigns.

[B777FD]

Hi all

I have noticed that some Air France ATC callsigns have recently become AF, as opposed to the usual ICAO callsign AFR.

I thought that only ICAO callsigns can be filed, not IATA?? And is the RT callsign the same? A couple of examples from today:

AF490MC LFPO-LFBZ A319 F-GRHD
AF850NE LFLL-LFBO A319 F-GRHG.


Thanks, I'm just curious.

(This is probably a question for anyone in Franch ATC as the flights in question appear to be domestic flights.)

[tobzalp]

I am guessing it is the length of characters being 7 digits/letters to fit with systems.

[IFPS man]

Quite right, regarding the seven character suggestion; in fact that format/convention has been used for several years...
IFPS man

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Air France ATC callsign, i.e. that used on R/T, is "Air France".

[B777FD]

The 7 charachter convention I am familiar with - I was not aware that if you needed a longer flight number you could do so at the expense of one of the charachters of the airline ICAO designator.

I know that the R/T callsign is "Air France" for flights files as AFR, just was curious if it was also for the flights filed as AF.

[B777FD]

So there are that many AFR flights in a day that the remaining 4 charachters does not provide enough scope to devise unique flight callsigns. (By callsigns I mean ARCID). So they use AF as the prefix for their callsign - but the OPR is filed as AFR.

Thanks for your answers, I just thought it unusual as I have never noticed another airline using this practice and was curious. I have only just noticed it in the last few days.


Cheers

FD

[BrATCO]

This kind of callsigns has been used in French domestic for decades.

Most of them were former "Air Inter" callsigns which became "Air France" when the latter bought the first : they just replaced IT with AF.
Last 2 letters were already used to avoid callsign confusions and they remained.

Talking about a time when Air Inter was the only domestic company.

[Mister Geezer]

Neither French ATC or the Air France crews use the full domestic callsign anyway. It always gets abbreviated to simply Air France and the two remaining letters! Waste of time! :ugh:

[A7700]

I think that there is a lot of confusion about the "wording" definition compared to ICAO regulation , mainly DOC8585 et DOC4444 for FPL :

BAW = ICAO Airline three letters code

BAW302 = Airline three letters code + flight number
This "block" is the ICAO [/U]Flight identification[/U] (Box 7 of the FPL)

Speedbird is the ICAO telephony designator for BAW

Speedbird 302 is the call sign of the flight files as BAW302

So "call sign" is only for radiotelephony using only telephony designator and flight number ( outside the use of the standard aircraft registration)

As written in the other posts some regional flights in France were using alpha numéric flight identification to avoid radiotelephony callsign confusion as many of the incidents were coming from the numeric similarity of the flight number. Interesting study to read on that subject published as CAP704 on the CAA web.

[Mister Geezer]

The difference here is that Air France use AF and not AFR as the company designator on many domestic flight plans. Strictly speaking AF as a company designator in a FPL means bugger all in ICAO Doc 8585! ;)

I am sorry if it seems as if I am on my high horse with this. Due to these callsigns being a digit longer than normal, French ATC never use the full callsign and they have often abbreviated the alpha numeric callsigns of other operators too.

I nearly had an nasty incident once in CDG since I was operating a flight that had an alpha numeric callsign and the Paris controller simply used the last two letters of the alpha numeric mix - as he would with a Air France flight. He thought I was ignoring him and I thought he was calling somebody else.... until no one was answering his calls and the penny dropped. :ugh:

[BrATCO]

We've got to call French speaking pilots with their full callsign on first contact. We can use the "shortened" callsign afterwards if there's no chance of confusion.
Just the same as "GXXMT" will be called "G-MT" after first contact.

We usually don't use shortened callsign with English speaking flights.
Most of the time, non-French alphanumeric mixed callsigns end with only ONE letter, thus we can't shorten them anyway.

Exemples of controller's memorisation process :
(Non exhaustive list)
Callsigns with 3 numbers will be memorised "as is", no problem.
Callsigns with 4 numbers will be memorised 2+2 numbers and will keep 4 numbers on the freq, no real problem.
Callsigns with numbers and letters will be memorised in a shorter form (basicly 2 letters or 1 letter+1 number, depending on the sequence at the end of the callsign) and the controller will have to think a bit more and recheck the full callsign to include it in the message... Just as you would memorise a first name and think a bit more to find one's family name.

Under pressure, there's a possibility that the controller calls the pilot in the way the callsign was memorised.

Might this be an explanation ?

[A7700]

Even with a reduced AF airline 2 letters code, the call sign is still "AirFrans" and the complete flight ID is used on the first contact including all figures and letters(Annexe 10) and reduced then from the second call.
I have check with the CDG safety ATC unit no incident have been reported for years ( and I have been there for more than 25 of them...:bored:)

[Murty]

Only last month I had to tell Air France to CNL and refile on a Paris to Birmingham ATR72 Airlinair flight using the correct ICAO code rather than the IATA ,which they did and should be using.