Reply #19: Odd N Numbers and info on the BTS [View All]

DulceDecorum-

I think I can clear up some of your confusion about the odd looking tail numbers in the Bureau of Transportation's On Time reports as well as answer your question about when Flight 93 flew back from San Francisco to Newark.

For some reason AA freqeuntly reports the tail # using their internal fleet number, but there is a way to convert them. The fleet number is the number and two letters between the "N" and the "AA". Based on what I can tell, if the number after the "N" is a "5" then it's a 757, if the number is a "3" it's a 737 and if it's a "4" it's a MD-80 or variant.

Even though the final update was December, 2002 you can still find a lot of these at Bill Harm's old Commercial Jet Aircaft Census website.

http://bird5.bird.ch/bharms/asr_sh00.htm

For instance if I want to know what plane N5BPAA is and I know that the plane is a Boeing 757, go to the 757 page at:

http://bird5.bird.ch/bharms/boeing/b757_t_0.htm

and then if you have a "find" button on your keyboard, look for the middle three numbers (between the "n" and the "aa" ex: find "5BP" and it should scroll right down to the aircraft. N5BPAA is N644AA, the aircraft that operated as Flight 77.

Regarding when the aircraft that operated as United Flight 93 flew back to Newark from San Francisco, east-bound redeye flights that lose a day are reported a little differently. The departure record and the arrival record will both be shown under September 10 since that's when the flight left San Francisco. To see when the flight departed San Francisco you would check departures for United out of SFO for September 10, 2001. To see when the flight arrived in Newark the next morning (Sept 11) , you would check Newark arrivals for United for September 10th, even though the plane actually arrived on the 11th. It goes by the date the flight took off. Do that and you will see that the departure time and arrival times and the elapsed time all match up and so does the tail #.

Hope that helps a little.