Lufthansa callsigns

[Check Airman]

Last night, while listening to the Switzerland feeds, Just about all of the Lufthansa callsigns ended with a letter (eg Lufthansa 44W).

Each flight ended with a different letter. What does the letter signify?

[SwissRadar]

This is only to prevent mistakes with similar flight numbers on ATC.

Here is a discussion about this: http://www.airliners.net/discussions/tech_ops/read.main/129890/

By the way: A lot of European Carriers use this system (eg. Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss, SN Brussels, NetJets Europe)

[JetScan1]

FYI, you can find a decode of LH flight numbers at this site:

http://members.lycos.co.uk/TERRYWADE/dlhatc2005.txt

(although I think the list needs to be updated for the winter ?)

As noted a very common practice for a number of airlines in Europe. AFAIK it's not used yet by any North American carriers, although United routinely uses 9xxx flight numbers to avoid conflicts with same numbered flights, and British Airways, Swiss, Alitalia have been noted using an alpha numeric callsign on some of their trans Atlantic flights to North America.

DJ

[Check Airman]

thanx

[madbadrob]

Brittania use A and B after their flight call sign to distinguish whether it is out going or incomming.  So if your sat at Say Heathrow and you hear Brittania 1234A you are aware it is departing and if it is Bravo it is recovering

Rob