Callsign selection

It is possible to select particular groups of flights by specifying all, or just the first part, of the flight callsign. If the specification starts with a minus sign then it is a request to exclude the groups. Callsigns are shown in the results of a request.

Before giving details on these possibilities, please note that mistakes are inevitable in the evaluation of the data that we get from the aircraft transponders and in the process of trying to classify it. Callsigns may be incorrect (because the crew of the aircraft involved made a mistake in entering the desired ICAO callsign or used an IATA callsign) and information on the aircraft ICAO 24-bit identifier, obtained from various websites (we have not yet found one which is official and guaranteed to be correct), may contain errors. Thus, any evaluation of a particular flight may not be entirely correct: the only guaranteed value is the ICAO aircraft identifier.

All aircraft should send out a callsign in their transponder emissions. For commercial airlines this is normally a 3-character identifier assigned by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, followed by several characters to specify the particular flight. As an example, Swiss International Airlines uses the callsign SWR, whilst Easyjet (Switzerland) uses the callsign EZS.

If a selection includes any letters then it is assumed to be a request to specify all aircraft whose callsign starts with the selection.

This ICAO callsign is NOT the same as a 2-character identifier assigned by IATA (which is the one that you normally see listed on airport arricval/departure boards). For instance, Swiss International Airlines uses the IATA code LX.

For flights of aircraft which are private, the callsign tends most often to be virtually the same as the aircraft registration code. These start with characters indicating the country. Thus, aircraft registered as HB-??? are ones registered in Switzerland.

For information on aircraft callsigns (and on many other things) see Wikipedia.

Given all of the above, some possible selections might be

EZY205C Select the Easyjet (UK) which is scheduled to leave at just before 22h each night
-EZ Exclude all callsigns starting with EZ: this excludes all Easyjet flights