Five-digit flight numbers?

[Mattg]

I came across this article recently:

Airlines Are Running Out Of Flight Numbers, And They Don't Know What To Do About It - View from the Wing

Airlines use up to four digits for flight numbers. That means they can have up to 9,999 flights (since there’s no flight zero), and no one comes close. American Airlines operates around 6,700 daily flights including its American Eagle regional services. So they should have plenty of room to...

viewfromthewing.com

Most airlines can manage with four-digit flight numbers, but some of the US airlines have so many flights (plus codeshares, etc.) that they are running out of numbers and have to reuse the same numbers on return legs of flights and/or different routes.

Could we start seeing five-digit flight numbers - and would GDS platforms etc. be able to handle it?

If it ever does happen, Rome's FCO airport will be ready - they already show five-digit flight numbers at the boarding gates (for no apparent reason).

 

[AIRwin]

If it ever does happen, Rome's FCO airport will be ready - they already show five-digit flight numbers at the boarding gates (for no apparent reason).

All routes lead to Rome

 

[Warragul]

Not a new problem, been discussed at IATA level for 5 years or so.The standard for a number is set in the IATA document - Standard Schedules Information Manual and is up to 4 numerics (letters that occur after the number are called 'an operational suffix related to flight number'. This won't change (or maybe has in last year or so) til, as alluded to above, the Reservation systems,GDS,DCS plus quite a few more) can handle up to 5 or more.

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[justinbrett]

ICAO flight plans are also restricted to 4 characters (plus 3 for the airline) so I don’t think this will happen.

Easier to just add a second airline code for the few airlines that actually need it.