Ryanair Call-signs
 

Can anyone shed light on the call-sign naming convention used by Ryanair. Some flights seem to use their actual flight number, whereas others use different call-signs to their flight number. Why two systems?

Where separate call-signs are used from the flight number these are invariably totally different on the inbound and outbound sectors (e.g. RYR99TR in and RYR35LK out).

Thanks
airsmiles

This is becuase they may conflict with other callsigns, It just gives atc a break.

Example

RYR701
TOM701

Would be pretty annoying, so RYR70K
TOM7PY may be the alternate.

Well I sort of understand that but RYR9911 is RYR99TR (makes sense), but RYR9912 is RYR35LK (which doesn't make sense). There's no logic to how RYR99TR and RYR35LK are named when you consider the actual flight numbers.

airsmiles

airsmiles
 

AlphaNumeric callsigns are not to make sense if the use of them is to work. Over 10 years ago, I worked with 'coded' AlphaNumeric callsigns. There are many Airlines operating the same routes, using 'predefined' flight numbers, ie, ABCxxx1 being the first flight, ABCxxx2 being the return. Now code a London-Paris for example 01LP and the return 02PL.......Multiple users of AlphaNumeric on a large network have the same idea. 0600 at LHR you have BAW01LP and 0605 you have AFR01LP, clipped transmittion and you should be seeing the point. It is all about ATC and callsign confliction as a previous poster said, so random works best. As long as the Airlines have a method of identifying the commercial flight number v the ATC call, the jobs a fish.

Now look at a base like STN for RYR, a lot of flights may leave on the same initial routing, for 100 miles.............. Forget other carrries in adjacent airspace, there is a problem.

Now for the carriers that attempt to corrupt XYZx370 to XYZ370 as my carrier did, the use of headings or levels is frowned on too.

MINE FIELD and random allocation is the key.


Bored

Okay, I understand about ATC and callsign confliction and the need for alpha numeric call-signs.

The second part of the question being the naming covention used. Someone makes a conscious decision that RYR99TR inward is becomes RYR35LK outward. Why not RYR99TS or RYR100TR? There must be a system for naming call-signs RYR and others use.

Somone must know the answer!

airsmiles.

There seems to be a small system in the numbering of flights dependant on the ryr base they start from.
For example, from Edinburgh, a lot of our flightnumbers and callsigns begin with 6 or 66 if they are flown by Edinburgh based aircraft. From Shannon, a lot of the flightnumbers and callsigns begin 11.
However, there doesn't seem to be any hard and fast rule with regard to callsigns apart from what has been mentioned about conflicting callsigns and helping out ATC.
So the 6604 EDI - BOH goes down as RYR6604, but the 6605, BOH-EDI comes back as RYR0DM. No obvious reason :ok:

RYR738_driver

Thanks RYR738_driver. It must make sense to someone!

I know it's not really the point of your question, but it's not RYR100TR as you're only allowed 7 characters in a callsign.

Some changes are to avoid conflict with other operators on the same or similar route.

Ryanair is also one of a small number of airlines is mix up the letters & numbers, for example RYR8KG3 (which is LEAL - EGSS)

Most airlines when using alphanumeric callsigns tend to have the numbers first which are then followed by the letters, I guess the above version makes the callsign much more unique & less likely to cause any confusion.

FC

There's a very good reason for it all...

Each time a new route is loaded into the system the people in scheduling allocate flight numbers for a particular route. These people are not concerned with callsigns...their only aim is to maximise use of the aircraft.

The route starts operating and the flightplans are filed accordingly. The callsigns will be the same as the flightplans.

If it turns out that a particular flight is operating at the same time as another with a similar callsign then most likely ATC will ask for it to be changed. They do this in a number of ways such as contacting the operations dept directly or by asking the flight crew to advise operations of the similarity.

The callsign is then changed to something different.

So take the example of RYR9911 becoming RYR99TR and RYR9912 becoming RYR35LK.

It is most likely that operations were made aware of RYR9911 having a similar callsign to another flight for example on 1st September so the flightplans are changed to a new callsign. Then the schedule changes at the end of october and it turns out that RYR9912 now has a similar callsign to some other flight so that gets changed too. They dont necessarily look at the outbound callsign to get ideas for the inbound. In addition the other flight could have a callsign also beginning with the numbers 99 so it gets changed to something totally different.

The callsigns used are mostly random however it is also quite common for the person doing the refiling to use their initials in the latter part of the callsign. They also use the last two letters of the aircraft operating the flight on the day that they are asked to refile. It is very possible that EIDLK was operating RYR9912 when the callsign was changed to RYR35LK.

In other cases they simply reverse the callsign. An example is RYR552 DUB-MAN is RYR5WT and on the way back to DUB as RYR553 it's RYR5TW...these would most likely have been changed on the same day.

Another example of this is when aircraft are being delivered from boeing the callsign is always RYR800 followed by the last letter of the aircraft registration. ie EIEBF would be RYR800F and EIEBG would be RYR800G.

I hope this goes some way to answering your question.

Yep, that covers it all. Thanks for taking the time to explain it.

airsmiles

I always taught that it might be something like captain's ID so you can immediately recognize who is the captain of that flight, working within the company. As there is about 67600 combinations for nnLL (n=number, L=letter). My thinking was obviously wrong. 😊😊😊