"Lima" was the callsign of the BAC One-Eleven test pilots at Hurn. The number was individual to each pilot.
Chuck Thrower, Dinty Moores, Alan Smith, Dave Glazer, (or was it Peter Glazer?), are some who come to mind.

Interesting, did the VC10 test pilots at Wisley use a similar set up? Any idea what that callsign could have been?

Sorry I don't know. I was only at Hurn with BAC, '69 to '73.

Ref:- 3M Co Gulfstream 2's. N23M, N33M etc. These were regular in the UK for many years. I have a vague recollection that they used the callsign "Mining" followed by the first number of the registration i.e. Mining 2, Mining 3 etc. Anyone confirm (or otherwise). MTIA.

Yes, that's correct. 3M started out as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.

Thanks for the quick reply, wasn't sure if my memory chips were still working properly!

Hong Kong Airlines cargo operation uses the callsign "Mascot". Having flown under the Ascot callsign for many hours, it makes my ears prick up whenever I hear it.

Ascot is used by All RAF transport aircraft when route flying.
Air Support Command Operational Traffic by any chance ?
David

ASC Operational Task, I think

Sorry I'm a bit late on board. Mr. Raffles lived in a fabulous house on Ham Common near Richmond in Surrey and drove up to LHR every morning in his Bentley. He took me with him once in 1965 when I was twelve. He told me he had crashed his previous two aircraft; a Cessna and a Mooney and, of course, he went on to crash Zulu Charlie and walk away. Anyone know anything about those events? "Raffles One" was definitely in use before the arrival of his last aircraft and he used that call sign to bring it into LHR from Sweden.

G-ASZC was cancelled as sold in Finland in '69 - might have been repaired after a wheels up or something.

Was spelled and pronounced "Limar"- don't know why. Yes, Dave Glazer (with a long "a").

2 s

Crackerjack! (Peter Glazier)

Glaze, IIRC.

You are right...

No cabbage for me, then. :O

Crackerjack! That brings back some memories.
What was it? A pencil for a correct answer and a cabbage if you got it wrong.

I was not sure If it was Dave or Peter as I was apprentice with the other Glazer.
So it was Dave the pilot and Peter the apprentice.

Some crew would stick a note on the forward instrument panel with the flight number in large letters for all crew to see, viz. Speedbird 509. I was amused one day to see Birdseed 509 posted ! Don't recall anyone actually transmitting that.

An earlier post queried the call sign Clipper One, or Two. and a response was that Clipper Two was the Round the World service Westwards from USA. Not sure if all airlines followed the protocol, i.e. was it an ICAO thing ? but I recall flight numbers followed the principle " Evens go East " e.g. BA 510 went to New York and BA 509 came back.

I've just been looking at a spreadsheet I knocked up showing transtlantic flights in 1969. Its certainly true that flight numbers were more likely to follow the w/b odd principle in earlier years although this varied by airline. In the 70s odd numbers were mostly westbound but there were exceptions. W/b Europe - Anchorage were mostly even (but then TYO is eastbound). QF 530 operated LON - SYD w/b. AZ. LH & TP used even number w/b transatlantic. Today BA uses odd number for outbound long haul & even nos for outbound short haul & v.v. regardless of direction. As an aside I believe in the 80s you could identify the aircraft type on a Delta flight by the range its flight number was in.

From BOAC days - it was “odd” to leave Great Britain.

Speedbird 12 was my favourite in the '70s.
Hong Kong, Muscat, London.
My Gozome bird when I was at Seeb.

I stand to be corrected, but as someone who spent some 4 years with BA in Muscat the BA11/BA12 routeing was always LHR/MCT/SIN/SYD and return...at least during the early '80's. Maybe the route changed in later years?

I don’t know about differentiating between east & west bound departures but, from the 60s onwards the following airlines used even numbers on departures from Europe to USA/Canada :-
DLH, AZA, SWR
& the following used odd:-
AFR, BAW, EIN, KLM, SAB, IBE, SAS, AFL, OAL, TWA, PAA, ELY, AIC, TAP, KAC.
The others I am not certain about.

Was it Dan-Air that at one time (1980s maybe) used a callsign suffix of Alpha for Away, and Bravo for Back?

Britannia certainly did that (A UK outbound, B return) but I'm not sure when that started.

From my logbooks ... early 60's, many examples of leaving Great Britain for Rome, Beirut, Teheran etc. on the BA 900. and back on the BA 901, which supports my memory of Evens go East.

It may be memory fade by me.
I'm thinking of the VC-10 operation.
I think the 747s started in SYD.
Used to call BA about 7pm. to check if it was on time. One evening I was told that the 747 hadn't left SYD yet. Cue, quick dash to get Gulf Air to Bahrain and catch a flight from there. I think I went KLM DC-10 to Amsterdam then BA Trident to Heathrow.
Over 40 years ago!

I believe the odd number KLM uses is because the first flight in 1919 did not depart from Amsterdam, but from London to Amsterdam, it was therefore flight 101. I think this service still has this flight number, although with an extra zero. Is this the oldest flight number still in use on the same stretch?

Yes - And Dan 99FA for empty positioning........:rolleyes:

Thanks, that's one I'd forgotten .......... :rolleyes:

Actually, Dan-Air call were not so simple
Positioning flights usedcthe number 99 followed by the last two letters of the aircraft reg. Eg 99victorgolf.
The only other use of alpha numerics was an experiment in 1982, all letters of the alphabet were used except A and D.
1st letter was B then a 4 denoting a 1-11 or a 6 denoting a 748. So 24 letters used. Eg DA001 B6BB, DA024 B6BZ. DA025 C6BB, DA048 C6CZ.
These were the only examples of alpha numerics used by Dan

I cannot find prove for this:
KL101 was used last in 2019 for a flight from London City to Antwerp.
I could not find data for flights KL0101
KL1101 is used for flights to Damman.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....42f3b0c001.png

SLB, you're putting the extra '0' in the wrong place.
In happier times, KL1001 is (was?) the first AMS-LHR flight each day.
Tot ziens, 'ZG

Sorry you missed the humour Bean

A famous MAN based 1-11 Capt (Barry J) was inbound from LGW in an empty aircraft when an equally famous Manchester air trafficker asked “what does the FA stand for? “
He replied “ no pax - as in sweet fanny Adams”

Except he didn’t say those exact words :eek:

F.A. ? Can't remember the detail now, so doubtless will be corrected. Aircraft talking to a USA controller somewhere ? in the US used an offensive word, I 'think' the F word, and was immediately chastised by the controller, which resulted in many aircraft also on the freq. to deliberately repeat it e.g. " I didn't say F" and "Did you say F?" " I just heard someone say F " " Who said F ? " " Did I hear F ? " All without any identifying call signs. 0

Such fun.

FlightAware is/was getting confused.

KLM didn't operate LCY-Antwerp. Air Antwerp did, with a Fokker 50 - flight numbers were WP101 (maybe where the confusion arose), WP121, WP141, etc.

Perhaps KLM codeshared on the route?

Thank you for correcting me on the KL 1001.
I am not such a flight tracker that I know when Flightaware would be upset.
I to wondered a bit about KLM flying on Antwerp.
But they indeed have a code sharing with Air Antwerp on that route.

Transmeridian Air Cargo/TMAC. Their callsign was - from memory - their 2-letter flight plan identifier which was "KK" or "Kilo Kilo". When BAF leased 2 of their CL-44's briefly in 1972 does anyone know if they flew under the "Kilo Kilo" callsign or did they use "Air Ferries"? Or of course the aircraft registration. Logically I would expect them to use a TMAC callsign as the aircraft would have been operated under their AOC rather then the BAF one.

Any answers much appreciated.

International Air Services (Cargo) used "Foxtrot Foxtrot" for both the Britannias and the DC8's.

Pelican Air Transport used "Pelican" which teed off Air France Cargo who had previously used this but had not registered the callsign. DP was the designator for the flight plans.