Air Traffic Control Question?

Question

Just a quick question here, why do commercial flights often come across as "Flight 96Victor" instead of "Flight 96"?

I assumed it was the flight number in combination with the aircraft tail number, but after checking numerous times i have reached a dead end. Cannot seem to find any other information on the matter, and help would be appreciated.

-Nc

Answer 1

Generally the callsign of an aircraft on the radios is the type of aircraft and tail number (the registration...basically the license plate of an airplane).  This will mostly be shortened to the last three alphanumerics of the aircraft's tail number.

Ex:

I often fly a Cessna Skyhawk at work with a tail number of N122SF.

The N refers to the country it is registered (in this case the USA) and is generally left out of most radio calls.

After initially calling ATC with my full callsign, using phonetics instead of letters ("Skyhawk One Two Two Sierra Fox-trot") we will usually shorten it to "Skyhawk Two Sierra Fox-trot."

This is done pretty much because it's faster on the radio.

That being said, airlines and many charter companies do not use the tail number of the aircraft, but the flight number.

Ex:

American Eagle (an American Airlines feeder) will use the callsign of "Eagle Flight" on the radio followed by the flight number.

"Eagle Flight Five Two One" for Eagle Flight 521.

The callsigns ust be approved by the FAA for use and usually are just the airline's name ("Comair" or "American") and some get pretty creative.  ASA uses "Acey."  AirTran uses "Citrus."  Republic Airlines has my personal favorite of "Brickyard."

So...

Acey 491

Citrus 2517

Brickyard 192

It's easier than using and reusing a tail number.  All those letters get pretty droll.

Answer 2

Victor just means the letter "V" but why they are adding that to the flight number, i'm not sure.

Answer 3

Two possibilities that come to mind:  

Some operators do, in fact, use part of the tail number for the flight number.  Petroleum Helicopters does this, for example.  The flight would look like "PHM29Z" to the controller.  Also the Angel Flight volunteers operate this way as well such as "NGF22K."

Occasionally, there may be a flight with a duplicate callsign active in the ATC system.  For instance if "CCP102" is late reaching a hub, the company may launch the outbound flight from the hub with the same number before the inbound cancels its flight plan.  ATC computers are not happy about identical flight numbers active at the same time, and often the easiest way for a controller to handle the problem on the fly is to append an alpha character to the flight number such as "CCP102X."