Understanding why/when a same flight has 2 faFlightId

FlightAware AeroAPI
1

Hi team,

Today, i wanted to follow faFlightId: AFR7710-1589604351-airline-0024 that is flight n°AFR7710 scheduled on 2020/05/18@2.45pm

So i set an alert not on faFlightId but on the flightNumber AFR7710 to receive all events related to that scheduled flight and here is what i’ve received:

  • 2.35pm: filed event for AFR7710-1589604351-airline-0024
  • 2.57pm: “adhoc_departure” event for flight AFR7710 with a new faFlightId AFR77WC-1589784407-ed-0000
  • 2.57pm: departure event for AFR7710 and the new faFlightId: AFR77WC-1589784407-ed-0000
  • 2.57pm: filed event for AFR7710 and the new faFlightId: AFR77WC-1589784407-ed-0000

I really don’t get what happened on that flight, can someone help me to understand:

  1. What does the adhoc_departure event means ?
  2. Why do i received 2 filed event on that flight
  3. Why 2 faFlightId were created on the same flight AFR7710 ?
  4. Why didn’t i received a cancelled event on AFR7710-1589604351-airline-0024 as it appears to be cancelled (actualdeparturetime = -1 and estimatedarrivaltime = -1 and actualarrivaltime = -1)

Thanks a lot for your help, this is really mistery to me :sweat_smile:

Fred.

2

This appears to be the result of a call sign disambiguation failure that cancelled the active flight. Thankfully it looks like this scenario has been fixed so that the flight AFR7710 would have been the normally tracked flight with a normal “departure” message.

3

Hi @dogrock,

Many thanks you for your reply.

So, do you mean that it should not happen again ? I need to track specific flight by its faFlightId and be really sure to receive all events. Can we expect that only 1 unique faFlightId will be generated for a specific flight ?

Still about understanding faFlightId and data informations:
For faFlightId AFR7622-1589863519-airline-0088, i’ve received :

  • a cancelled event on 9:55 AM, 19 May 2020.
  • Then a filed event, 2 days later, on 9:26 AM, 21 May 2020 for same faFlightId
  • Then departure and arrival events.

What does the cancel event means if the flight is finally still scheduled and takes off on almost it’s regular time ?

Rgds

4

It’s unusual, but the alerts reflect what happened. The advanced schedule intent was cancelled, but the airline later decided that it was going to re-activate (or “undo” the cancellation) the the original schedule and then filed a flight plan that reflected the original schedule.