Wikidata:Property proposal/flight number

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flight number

[edit]

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Transportation

   Done: flight number (P3090) (Talk and documentation)
Descriptionidentifier for a specific flight
Representsflight number (Q133663)
Data typeString
Domainaircraft accidents and incidents, airline routes or individual flights
Allowed values2-3 letters, or 1 letter and 1 number in either order, optional space or hyphen, 1-4 digits, 0 or 1 letters
Example
Format and edit filter validation([A-Z]{2,3}|[A-Z][0-9]|[0-9][A-Z])\d{1,4}[A-Z]?
See alsoIATA airline designator (P229), ICAO airline designator (P230)
Motivation

The flight number is often the primary reference used by the media as an identifier in the case of an air accident, e.g. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (Q15908324) → MH370, and in combination with a date uniquely identifies an individual flight, so it seems useful to record this. The first portion of the flight number will always be a valid ICAO or IATA airline designator, and a flight may have more than one number (including with unrelated prefixes - i.e. codeshares). The regex above isn't quite right I don't think but I'm not sure why so please could someone more knowledgeable than me fix it! Thryduulf (talk) 14:05, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion
 Support This seems fine to me - although if there's something more general than just for airlines (bus and train route numbers also?) maybe that should be used in preference. This isn't the fleet/registration number that was discussed earlier so I don't see a conflict there. Note that multiple flight numbers may apply to a single flight (in code-share cases one flight may be nominally with two or three different airlines at the same time). ArthurPSmith (talk) 18:21, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well buses and trains certainly have their own route numbers, but they are in different formats and different in scope and so best handled I think with a different property. For example, since 1960 trains in the UK have had a w:train reporting number (AKA headcode) in the format 0A00 (e.g. 1A01, 9I99) and can be repeated. There is a seperate service number which is not very prominent at all and doesn't generally get reported even in specialist media. w:train reporting number (Australia) indicates that there are a variety of systems in use in that country, and I suspect that the US is even more complex still. My understanding is that individual bus journeys are not typically numbered, rather identified by the route number and time of departure, with a "run number" or "running number" identifying the itinerary of a vehicle or driver (e.g. run 10 might be the 09:00 Route 5 departure from A to B, the 09:30 Route 5 departure from B to A, etc. Run 11 could be the 09:15 departure from A to B on Route 5, etc), in the event of an incident only the route number is reported as run numbers really are only for internal management only. Thryduulf (talk) 21:24, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, yes, I see there's a qualitative difference there. I support this property as is then. ArthurPSmith (talk) 18:11, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
 Support, although I would mandate a space between the airline code and the flight number for consistency and ease of querying reason. I.e. if I don't know what format is used, I have to query for all three possible formats. --Srittau (talk) 00:07, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Thryduulf: Comment I think the , following \d{1,4} in your regex should be removed. Furthermore it is more convenient to replace {0,1} by ?, which has the same meaning. By the way, I think you should indeed, as Srittau suggests, choose between either space, or hyphen, or nothing, to make the code unique. Lymantria (talk) 07:15, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Feel free to improve the regex - I'm very much an amateur. The point regarding ease of querying is a good one, I'll have a look and see which format is most commonly used before choosing which to mandate (my gut feeling is that neither space nor hyphen is the most common on en.wp but that's before looking). Thryduulf (talk) 11:38, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Having looked at a lot of articles on en.wp, of those that prominently mention the flight number 23 used no space or hyphen, 2 used a hyphen and 3 used a space. Based on that I think using neither here is best and so I've adjusted the description and regex accordingly. Thryduulf (talk) 12:18, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I have also removed what looked like spurious comma in front of the optional last letter of the regex. --Srittau (talk) 19:38, 11 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
 Support. Thierry Caro (talk) 08:29, 12 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

 Support ChristianKl (talk) 12:53, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Thryduulf, ChristianKl, Thierry Caro, Srittau, ArthurPSmith: done --Pasleim (talk) 10:39, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]