Commercial airline call signs
C
Commercial operators , including scheduled airline , air cargo and air taxi operators , will usually use an ICAO or FAA-registered call sign for their company . By ICAO Annex 10 Chapter 5.2.1.7.2.1 -
Full call signs type C , a call sign consists out of the telephony designator of the aircraft operating agency , followed by the flight identification .
The flight identification is very often the same as the flight number , but could be different due to call sign confusion , if two or more flights close to each other have similar flight numbers ( e . g . KLM649 and KLM645 or BAW466 and BAW646 ).
For example , British Airways flight 75 would use the call sign Speedbird Seven – Five , since Speedbird is the telephony designator for British Airways and 75 would be the flight identification . ( The telephony designator is not the same as the call sign , although the two are sometimes conflated ). Pan Am had the telephony designator of Clipper .
For these call signs , proper usage varies by country . In some countries , such as the United States , numbers are spoken normally ( for the example above , Speedbird Seventy-five ) instead of being spelled out digit by digit , leading to the possibility of confusion .
In most other countries , including the United Kingdom , they are spelled out .
Air taxi operators in the United States sometimes do not have a registered call sign , in which case the prefix T is used , followed by the aircraft registration number ( e . g . Tango- November- Niner-Seven-Eight-Charlie-Papa ).
Some variations of call signs exist to express safety concerns to all operators and controllers monitoring the transmissions . Aircraft call signs will use the suffix " heavy " for heavy aircraft , to indicate an aircraft that is going to cause significant wake turbulence , e . g . United Two-Five Heavy ;
All aircraft capable of operating with a gross take-off weight of more than 136 tonnes . must use this suffix whether or not they are operating at this weight during a particular phase of flight . These are typically Boeing 747 , some models of the 757 , 777 , or 767 , Airbus A340 , A330 , A350 and A300 , McDonnell Douglas DC-10 or MD-11 , or Lockheed L-1011 aircraft .
A - Z of Flight
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