Flight 666
 

I was checking the FR24 and I saw a flight 665 to nearing its destination. I understand / have seen flight numbers to be retired from service after an accident that had attracted a lot of publicity - or on some airlines there is no row 13. However I am curious to see any of our members here have boarded a flight 666 to any destination.

I think Flight nr 2020 would top 666 any time now!

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....212445a7ef.jpg

FR666 DUB-BHX

Flight numbers may be retired for a few years after a major incident but usually end up being resurrected. With three digits only giving a thousand possibilities permanent delation wouldn't be practical.

Leading Zeros are now creeping in but, after Covid, we probably won't need Four Figure flight numbers for a while.

Flight to HEL
 

Finnair topped that; until 2017, they had a flight 666 ... straight to HEL.

I hope you are wrong on your forecast. However I think in the US, there are four digit flights and I know some special flights have a letter following the number.

So I am looking forward for a flight 666 and a seat 13D

Many European airlines, even before the current rash of ad-hoc and freight-only flights, have had 4-digit flight numbers in their timetables for years.

For example Aeroflot, Air France, BA, Blue Air, Brussels AL, Eurowings, Finnair, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa, TAP, Turkish, etc - and those are just the ones I can see out of my window.

Nice landing with a strong tailwind. I bet the passengers barely felt that one!

And the final AY666 to HEL was on friday 13th. Despite the odds it made it there on time.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel...-a7998271.html

BA have had 4 digit flight numbers for years. From memory in the early '80s:
0-299 Long Haul
300-999 Short haul (excluding domestic UK)
1000=1299 extra long haul,
1300-1999 extra short haul
2000-2299 Long haul Gatwick
2300-2999 short haul Gatwick.
I think domestic German (Berlin) were 3xxx, non London domestic 4xxx

With the advent of code shares 4 digit numbers have mushrromed (and made a bit of a mess of the BA system of numbering). It is said that Delta ran out of 4 digit numbers over 10 years ago. They asked IATA for a 2nd two character code but they were refused. If you look at some of their domestic flights you will find A-B-A with the same flight number.

In such circumstances not using 666 or 13 or some other numbers may not be practical.

A question is whether 0001 is diferent to 1. I doubt it but does anyone know.

A quick search gave at least the following possibilities (most of them are not active routes)
LH666 Lufthansa SJO to FRA
AY666 Finnair CPH to HEL
BA666 BA LHR to CHQ
AF666 Air France CDG to LIS (cargo)
UA666 United DEN to TUS
AA666 American Airlines FLL to DCA
RYR666 Ryanair VIE to MBX, interestingly also DUB to BHX
SK666 SAS NYC to OSL
QF666 Qantas ADL to BNE
TK666 Turkish Airlines NSI to ISL
AI666 Air India BOM to DEL

And much more, too much to list everything.

The (IATA) rule is that the presence or absence of leading zeroes does not create a different Flight Number.

Airlines are free to choose which presentation they prefer for timetables, airport screens, etc.

Eng 666?
 

I was a ramp eng with Big Airline and I noticed an eng friend had BA666 approval. Did it give him trouble, not really he said, just occasionally the techcrew go a bit silent if they notice.
A while after he retired I tried to chat up the lady who controlled the numbers and get 666. It was a no go and I was sent packing. Shame.

I have found with BA that the details are given with the leading zeros (last year was on 0057 and 0042. Yet, when entering the details to check in, the system drops the zeros and only shows the two digits. But then, we all know about BA and their I.T. systems ...

Historic Flight 666
 

Wasn't this a flight from Lisbon to the UK during the second world war that was shot down by Luftwaffe interceptors over the Bay of Biscay?
The actor Leslie Howard was one of those lost. It was also rumoured that Winston Churchill was supposed to have been aboard, which might be the reason it was attacked.
There was a book written about it in the in the late 1960's if my memory is correct.

Just a thought!

Date????????????????
 

Did they have aircraft in 1196,if they did no one told the Wright brothers

I can't remember which year it was, but Monarch operated a series with the return flight number/callsign out of Luton as 666.

It may have been on a B720, but it certainly caused a lot of joviality on the R/T at the time!

Leslie Howard was in a similar kind of flight number. From Wikipedia:

The full story of the flight, it's history and downing is interesting. Under the section Death : Wikipedia: Leslie Howard

On Tuesdays in Fiji one had the choice of flying to SIN or FUN

Was assigned a transponder code of 6666 in CDG a few years ago


It made the other pilot very uncomfortable, so much so he called clearance and asked for a different one


They didn’t understand why but granted the request

I have flown on FR666 DUB-BHX on several occasions, I think I even flew it on Friday 13th once. Thought it funny at first that they use such a number from such a Holy Country, someone somewhere was having a bit of fun with that one.

I'm sure that I read some years back that the "666" being the Devil was a mistranslation by scholars of yesteryear and the actual number was '616', I suppose that that ooens up more possibilities for the superstitious flyers. The whole Friday the 13th thing was to do with the Knights Templar being rounded up and killed, yet has permeated some cultures so deeply that it has become a thing.

Who decided to limit transponders to the digits 0-7 giving 4096 possible codes ? Prior to COVID, this was giving problems at busy times. A bit like two digit years and Y2K.

As the saying goes, it seemed a good idea at the time. :O

Isn't one of the purposes of Mode S to mitigate the shortage of available Mode A codes ?

I have a suspcion that 4096 is something to do with computer addressing/processing power/memory size.

Yep - it's an 8-bit thing from when processors were physically big, but powerfully small!

666
 

And I was lucky enough to fly an ACMI flight for Bruce Dickinson's fan club when his Astraeus 757 went tech. Our call sign? Flystar 666 of course.

A seat allocation of "G" is quite distressing on Vietnamese internal flights or S/E Asian flights especially on single aisle three plus three set ups. That is until it finally dawns that the letter "F" does not exist in their alphabet. No need to worry about being fed out of the escape hatch after all😊

In the Far East, the number '8' is considered very lucky. When I was doing a telecomms contract in HKG, I was told to arrange the new telephone numbers so that the main company number would end '8888'. So I guess they like those flight numbers.

The Asian fondness for the number 8 is why there is an A 380 but not 360 or 370 -yet.

On the telecoms front when the International Telecoms Union dished out country codes for the world Asia was allocated 8X or 8XX so they all got an 8 included in their country code. There is no 88 country code but some smaller countries get two eights like Taiwan 886 , whether that means Taiwan is luckier than PRG who knows.

A lot of politics involved with this exercise back in the 1960s with USA claiming 1 -(with some justification ) but that meant USSR also had to have a single digit code-7 (no justification). In Europe, France and Britain got the double number codes or 33 and 44 which for some reason was deemed better than 31 or 41.

As they say whats in a name -or number

[QUOTE]Asian fondness for the number 8 is why there is an A 380[/QUOTE]

I seem to recall that it was originally conceived as the A3XX to signify its size, but that XX had morbid connotations in Asia, so the luckier 380 moniker came about.