Additional 0 in flt numbers causes tracking to break - please fix

FlightAware General
1

I’ve known for a long time that FA removes leading zeros from flight numbers, albeit for reasons I don’t understand. Up until recently it’s never been a problem and you’d get the same results whether you searched with the 0 or without it.

This no longer appears to be the case. Southwest’s new Max N8713M testing as BOE013 no longer works. If you search in the BFI departures listings http://flightaware.com/live/airport/KBFI/departures?;offset=50;order=actualdeparturetime;sort=DESC you will find that it shows the following - (times are UTC)

(29th) BOE013 B738 Grant Co Intl (KMWH) Fri 16:31 Fri 18:01 Fri 17:54
(26th) BOE013 B738 Grant Co Intl (KMWH) Tue 16:56 Tue 17:57 Tue 17:52

But when you search for the flight number you get this :

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/BOE13

No mention of the flights from 26th or 29th. They definitely departed as a friend of mine watched them fly and the callsigns on the radio were as reported.

If you try forcing a 0 into the URL to make it BOE013 the site doesn’t allow you and defaults backs to BOE13.

What is causing this issue and can it be fixed by your techies?

2

It is a known issue and there is a ticket open for it. Hopefully we will have a fix for it soon.

3

A fix went into production yesterday evening for this issue. Please let us know if you continue to experience it.

4

Thanks CBW. Will advise if any problems.

5

Hi CBW, is there a way to retrieve ADS flight data where the callsign has been input with a space in them? For example I have seen a flight with ADS callsign ROBK 99 (with a space) but when searching, the site changes it to ROBK99 which doesn’t return any results because of the format mismatch. When it’s filed as ROBK99 without any space it works fine. I’ve tried adding _, -, %, & symbols as fillers for the space but they just return an INVALID error. Thanks.

6

We should handle that by sanitizing the ident. Could you provide an example?

7

See PM.

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