Flight Crew Last 90 Days 195; Flight Crew Total 10468; Flight Crew Type 3859
Distraction; Confusion; Communication Breakdown; Workload
No Specific Anomaly Occurred All Types
General None Reported / Taken
Company Policy
Flight number assignment at our Airline result in similar callsigns cause both an increase in pilot Controller communications in saturated ATC environments and resultantly increase the risk of inadvertent clearance and miss-communication which can lead to minor deviation or serious error. Although no error is being reported for this flight due to aggressive hear-back/readback awareness; this callsign situation needs to be addressed. On a particular day; three departures from the same airport in the late evening had similar callsigns: ABC X24; ABC Y24; and ABC Z22. On taxi out alone; I had to clarify with Ground Control that the clearance issued was for our flight (X24) and not Y24; in effect; doubling pilot-controller communications. We had to specify again while enroute that it was our flight to switch frequencies versus the misheard other. This experience is bad enough here in domestic operations; but is far worse in operation in the international theater where difficult accents (for both pilots and controllers) complicate the situation even more. I've flown into a European airport as X60 with Y60 on the same frequency; or from another European airport on X57; with Y57 trying to work the same ATC enroute and oceanic frequencies. This sometimes happens inadvertently when another airline has the same flight number; but is a terrible practice when the airline itself is setting up the chain of events that lead to communication errors. Although no errors occurred during this particular segment; the potential was great. As such; this is a communications safety issue that can and should be addressed promptly before a misheard clearance results in deviation or error.
An Air Carrier pilot noted numerous hear-back/read-back errors when his air carrier assigns flight numbers ending in the same two numbers into airports and airspace concurrently.