Just something I’ve been noticing…
Say N123AB, A G-4 is operating as a “taxi” flight with charter pax on board, ATC will denote this by placing a “T” in front of the reg… Therefore it shows up as TN123AB in FlightAware as well as any other ATC function.
In FlightAware the mouseover always reads “Congo-Brazielle” or something like that… Is there a way to edit this to read simply the registration, or possibly adding a note that it is a special taxi flight?
BTW great job guys!
Hi, Corey07850 and welcome to FlightAware. For a while, we used to strip the preceding tango from TN flights, but plenty of flights operate with a code like “TN1234” and they aren’t N1234. Thoughts?
I think Corey 07850 is referring primarily to the Congo labelling error, which is a known bug. Any progress to report on that one??
Well, I’d tend to argue that the FAA is “cheating” by handing off the T as part of the identifier and not the prefix e.g. T/N123AB/G, so FlightAware reading the country of origin as “TN” is technically correct. I’d like to create a solution so that TN123AB is presented as N123AB without breaking TN12345 that’s not N12345.
You shouldn’t be getting any TN prefix flight that aren’t American anyway. Officially, 3-letter codes are used in ATC no 2-letter ones so TN shouldn’t be linking to some airline in Congo.
I would say approximately 30% of bizjets operate with the Tango prefix on their reg and think it’s wrong to remove it on F/A, same goes for the Lima on Lifeguard flights too.
R
This is not true. There are flights beginning with TN operated by both foreign and domestic carriers, there are flights beginning with TN that are an N-number if you remove the T, and there are flights where if you were to remove the T, it’s not a valid N number – those are of unknown origin.
Prefixes can be 1, 2, 3, or 4 digits. I’m not sure about “officially,” but working at a flight tracking company, I spend a fair bit of my life in the reality of flight plans. 
I would say approximately 30% of bizjets operate with the Tango prefix on their reg
Quite a guess, but the actual percentage of non-airline flights operated with an identifier that begins with TN is 3.89%.
It’s a shortcoming in the ATC system that L is prepended to lifeguard flights. Even if you think it’s wrong, we’re actually compensating for this and it certainly reduces confusion without creating any. Even operators of lifeguard and air taxi flights regularly don’t know about the prefix that gets prepended; ask our support staff. If you want to talk about inconsistencies, you’ll notice that L is never prepended to airline flights even when they’re operating as a lifeguard.
It’s not that the “TN” is referring to an airline, but rather the actual aircraft registration which is registered in Congo.
Every country has their own way of registering aircraft… C-ABCD for Canada, G-ABCD for Britain, XA-ABC for Mexico etc.
Therefore if a Congo registered plane is flying in the US it would show up on FlightAware as TNABC or whatever
There really shouldn’t be any confusion about it. TN123 is always a US air taxi flight. TNABC is always an aircraft registered in the Congo. (123/ABC are generics for any number or letter combination, respectively.) FA should screen the third character of any ‘TN’ registration to determine whether it is numeric or alpha and should then adjust the ownership label accordingly.
Maybe FA is in the process of attempting this, but it may be a low priority item. For me, I’d prefer many other enhancements above the ‘TN’ label issue. It seems that we can make our own mental accommodations for air taxi flights once we’re aware of the situation.
Carry on … map enhancements first, please.
I’m not sure I exactly understand what you’re saying here, so I’ll ask. Aee you trying to say that there will never be a Congo registration number that starts with TN[0-9]? And, conversely, all USA registrations HAVE to have N[0-9]? Looking at faa.gov, I see the second is true… but I’ll defer to you for the first.
If that’s true, that’s a pretty ugly hack by ATC to shoehorn that functionality in there.
I’m not sure I exactly understand what you’re saying here, so I’ll ask. Aee you trying to say that there will never be a Congo registration number that starts with TN[0-9]? And, conversely, all USA registrations HAVE to have N[0-9]? Looking at faa.gov, I see the second is true… but I’ll defer to you for the first.
See http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0257.shtml has details about civil aircraft registration.
In most countries of the world, the registration consists of the nationality mark (e.g. TN, D, VH) followed by a dash and then 3 or 4 (depending on the country) letters.
A few countries have numbers following the nationaity mark. The USA, Panama, and Russia, among others, falls in this category. In the USA, there are up to 5 alphanumeric characters, with no more than 2 letters included. The letters are always at the end of the number. Letters “O” and “I” are not used.
Panama’s registration may be unique. Following the nationality mark of HP are 1 to 4 numbers and 1 to 3 letters. The letters indicate the owner of the aircraft. It can be the ICAO code (e.g. CMP for COPA) or some other code to indicate the operator (e.g. HC for Helipan Corp.).
Great explanation, damiross.
Thus if a letter follows ‘TN’, the plane is from the Congo. If a number follows ‘TN’, we have a U.S. plane.
We implemented a change to identify TN[0-9]* aircraft as their N-number equivalent although we intend to combine the two records in the long term.
Excellent… it works great, thanks for the help!