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Hi All
Any who know me will also know that when it comes to aviation I am pedantic to the extreme. Why? Because it 'pays' me to be such.
One year after starting to record commercial aircraft actual arrival statistics for carriers serving Durban's King Shaka International Airport, I wondered how often certain registrations appeared? Were aircraft just randomly selected out of a pool of serviceable aircraft at the airline? Were specific registrations assigned specific routes for a period of time and then rotated? Or, as some believe, did airlines like Emirates have a 'formula' which saw certain aircraft assigned on a rostering basis?
The only way to answer this question emphatically would be to start recording aircraft arrival registrations and see whether any pattern manifested.
Since I was already recording the other arrival information daily, adding the registration would be no extra effort. In time, my questions would surely be answered either way.
Needless to say, it is now over six years later and I am still recording aircraft registrations daily and would not stop under threat of death.
Although recording registrations can seem like an exercise in futility and can often become monotonous at times (when the same aircraft registrations make an all-too-frequent appearance), one must not lose sight of the reality that things WILL change at some stage.
The occasional fascinating revelation, when it happens, sticks out like a jewel glistening in the sun and makes all the effort worthwhile. It also inspires me to keep going to the next exciting revelation or anomaly.
Allow me, please to site but one example, if I may so indulge?
As anyone who has ever recorded aircraft registrations will tell you, there is no more interesting aircraft batch to record than the Boeing 777 fleet of Emirates. This is due to two factors – the sheer size of its fleet and the many letter blocks (eg A6-EBA – EBZ being one letter block, I call it the 'B' block; A6-ECA – ECZ being another letter block, the 'C' block, etc).
In late January 2024 I was busy shaving and contemplating Emirates Boeing 777 registrations (as I tend to do more often than I care to admit) when it suddenly dawned on me that, to my knowledge, I had not logged a C block registered arrival for as long as I could remember.
Without having my hard copy registration logs this would have been the end of the road as far as confirming my suspicions expeditiously was concerned, BUT I did have my trusty logs and I had full confidence that upon their consultation my suspicions would be confirmed either way.
I could not finish shaving fast enough and with residual water still on my face, I hurried to consult the hard copy logs (aka the Aviation Bible) which I keep in this format for just such contingencies where time is of the essence.
It took only a few seconds to find and confirm that the last C-block arrival had been conducted on September 29, 2023 by A6-ECI almost four months back at the time.
To place these findings into perspective recall firstly that Emirates flies the highest sustained frequency to KSIA of any foreign-based carrier, namely seven arrivals weekly. The next highest is Qatar Airways with five weekly arrivals.
Secondly, that in the four months preceding October 1, 2023, there had been no less than 73 C-block arrivals recorded with four in the last week prior to October 1 alone. Even more incredibly, during this same four month period, there had been one occasion from June 6 to 13, 2023 inclusive when C block registrations had flown to Durban on eight successive days!
Now there was nothing.
For the record, the C block drought was broken on February 6, 2024. You wouldn't guess the registration of this first arrival? Trust Emirates to start clinically at the beginning of that block with A6-ECA of course!
At the time of writing, late October 2024, there has been only three C block registration appearances at Durban for the whole of the year thus far despite the majority of this block's Boeings apparently still being active in the Emirates fleet.
Although the fate of the C-block aircraft does not form the basis for expansion here, I believe my earlier point is clear – without my registration logs I could not have had a reliable and sufficiently detailed source to consult to confirm my suspicions nor would I have been able to observe the interesting trend of eight successive days of C block registration use. Without a hard copy, I could not have received my answer so speedily.
Having analysed Emirates B777 registrations closely for the past six years, I have come to the following conclusions: Firstly, there is no formula for aircraft route assignment. If there was, a situation like the once-off appearance of one registration block on eight successive days would not have happened. Neither for that matter would it occur that to date some registrations have yet to make their first appearance at KSIA despite having been in Emirates service for the past five years eg, the majority of the Q-block examples.
In short, all of us would have been none the wiser to any of these fascinating observations that occasionally play out at King Shaka and mostly go blissfully unobserved by even aviation fundies.
My abiding mantra must be: The deeper you look, the more you see.
While these observations will not bring world peace or usher in the next ice age, I'm sure you would agree, you would rather know of them than not?
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