What level of airline employee chooses registrations?

[DaveReidUK]

Originally Posted by c52

I could imagine that in the USA it's different - in fact, do airlines in any other countries try to have significant registrations

There's less scope in the US, obviously, as all registrations are at least partly numeric with a maximum of two letters optionally tagged on to the end.

Where airlines are concerned, the best they can usually manage is to have their IATA designator (AA, DL, JB, etc) as part of the reg.

Some GA aircraft have pseudo-personalised marks, for example Occidental Oil (Oxy) have managed it in the past:

[kenparry]

Also I seem to remember a Britannia 737(?) seen regularly at Newcastle with reg G-BYAI (whyaye). Always wondered if that was deliberate!

This was a B757-204; "whyaye" was not deliberate, but the crews did appreciate the joke. That purchase went from G-BYAC to G-BYAY, all new build except G-BYAM which was on lease from Monarch and built to a different standard.

[El Bunto]

With the FAA algorithmic-derivation scheme for ICAO hex addresses you can have some 'fun' by picking an N-reg that encodes to a specific hex code. N22AE gives A1DEAD, for example. Or perhaps N2189N / A1DADA for Daddy's birthday present.

The CAA doesn't use a mapping algorithm. Actually, with every UK-registered airframe now being issued an immutable hex address I wonder for how much longer the CAA will persist with registrations, which are essentially duplicate unique-IDs now.

Here comes G-4070D1 !

[susier]

I came across one which made me do a double take the other day whilst looking at line numbers of B777s.


LN #403 happens to be HL7700. It's registered to Asiana and currently active.


I'd have thought they might avoid a sequence like that - a bit like not having a number 13 in a street of houses?




(although ironically, it's LN #404 which had the bad luck - that one's 9M-MRO)

[Alsacienne]

For interest look at the WOW fleet ... TF-BRO, -SIS, -MOM, -DAD, -GAY for starters!

[oldlag53]

...I believe Air UK had G-UK + a director's initials...

Just have to correct you a bit, Mr. c52...

I was at Air UK at the time and never did find out who was the crawler who sucked up to the directors!!

G-UKJF - Jim French, went on to Flybe.
G-CHSR - Helmut Schmidt-Reps, our liaison bod with KLM, despite actually being German.
G-CSJH - Stephen Hanscombe, our MD. Went on to 'consulting'.
G-UKSC - Finance Director Stuart Carson. Went to Flybe before retiring.
G-UKPC - Dear old Phil Chapman, aviation bod through and through.
G-UKHP - Harold Payne, Dir. of Engineering.
G-UKRH - named after our accounts dept at Crawley (KRH).
G-UKLN - Len Nutter, can't remember what he did.
G-UKRC - Robert Coleman, Customer Services chap.
G-UKAG - MD Andrew Gray who succeeded SJH.
G-UKAC - Director/'Chief Pilot/Holder of AOC Alan Cottle.
G-UKID - ???
G-CNMF - ???

Air UK Leisure behaved themselves and just used G-UKL...

Ah, those were the days...

[posso]

Going back a few years there was G-AWOG Twin Comanche owned by the (late), HRH Prince William of Gloucester.


Seem to recall even back then 1968, eyebrows were raised at the choice of letters, given the owners position in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office!

[El Bunto]

Talking about vanity registrations, just crossing the UK this morning is a GLF4 of the FAA, registration N1 ...

South African had its SPs registered in the ZS-SP_ range.

Perhaps immune to such toomfoolery are the Japanese JAnnnn and South Korean HLnnnn series. I wonder, can one even request an out-of-sequence? JA8888 was allocated to an SF34 but looks to be in sequence with others in the fleet.