United Airlines accidentally reinstates 9/11 flight numbers, apologizes

[News_Editor]

United Airlines accidentally reinstates 9/11 flight numbers, apologizes

2011-05-19 07:18:54 GMT+7 (ICT)

CHICAGO (BNO NEWS) -- United Airlines on Wednesday apologized for accidentally assigning flight numbers 93 and 175 to future flights. Both flight numbers were used as part of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Airline spokesman Rahsaan Johnson said United Airlines inadvertently applied flight numbers 93 and 175 as code-share flights onto Continental-operated flights. "We made that schedule update late Monday evening and we noticed it and immediately pulled those flights from the schedule early this morning," he said.

Flight 93 was supposed to travel between Houston and San Jose, California, while Flight 175 was to fly between Boston and Newark. On September 11, 2001, Flight 93 was scheduled to fly from Newark to San Francisco while Flight 175 was supposed to fly from Boston to Los Angeles.

Johnson said there were no flights which actually operated with those flight numbers. "Those flights were available for sale at some future point [..] but no flights have operated. Because we're talking about a 36 hour period or so, from Monday to this morning when they were for sale. No flights actually operated," the spokesman said.

United Airlines said it regrets the error and apologized. "I believe the computer assigned those flight numbers. We should not have allowed that to happen," Johnson said. "We already have permanently stopped using those flight numbers. This was an totally inadvertent error. Those flights are permanently out of use."

It is common policy among most airlines around the world to permanently retire the flight numbers of planes which were involved in a fatal incident. United Airlines, however, still operates flight numbers 608, 624, and 823 even though they were involved in fatal plane crashes between 1947 and 1964.

On September 11, 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger planes before crashing two of them into the World Trade Center in New York and another into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth, United Flight 93, crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.

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