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I am trying to obtain tail numbers for some flights to retrospectively complete my 5 month old's new passenger flight log book. Antonakis, FlightRadar24 and FlightAware sites are not giving me the answers since the flights took place too long ago.

This is the flight information that I have:

Flight No.    Date          Route

AC 8036       29/10/2015    YYZ-PIT 
AC 8037       02/11/2015    PIT-YYZ
AC 7508       05/12/2015    YTZ-YUL
AC 7521       12/12/2015    YUL-YTZ

Any help or instructions on where to obtain info would be greatly appreciated.

Note that this question is not a duplicate. This question is not answered by the question, How to determine the aircraft tail number on a particular flight?, since these flights occured too long ago to be found through the methods discussed in the answers to that question.

Community
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K Bell
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  • Try checking the airline's site, they may or may not not be there though. – SMS von der Tann Feb 02 '16 at 18:36
  • Try this site – TomMcW Feb 02 '16 at 19:22
  • @TomMcW It looks like he already checked there. – SMS von der Tann Feb 02 '16 at 21:12
  • @SMSvonderTann Ah. I missed that. – TomMcW Feb 02 '16 at 21:15
  • In theory for flights in the US(and possibly to/from the US), you can look for data through the DoT's Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The data is reported there, but I'm not positive on how to find it through all the data available there. http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Data_Elements.aspx?Data=2 – slookabill Feb 02 '16 at 21:23
  • For some flight, you can find the info using the "Historical Flight Status" on www.flightstats.com (check the event timeline for "TAIL Changed"), however this is not true for all flights (seems to be airline-dependent). – jcaron Feb 02 '16 at 22:59
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    A note, those flights were likely not operated by Air Canada, but probably another airline. The high flight numbers are a good sign of that. If you can figure out the airline, it could help you quite a bit. – Zizouz212 Feb 04 '16 at 02:46
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    In fact, AC8036 was a flight operated by Jazz Aviation. The aircraft seems to be a Bombardier CRJ. That should help you narrow down things, would it not? (Of course, this is for the latest flight that happened) – Zizouz212 Feb 04 '16 at 02:48
  • I don't know if you still need the tailnumbers, but I can help you for one: AC 7508 05/12/2015 YTZ-YUL this was C-FSRW according to flightradar24.com –  Apr 28 '16 at 11:49

1 Answers1

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If you come up blank on the various open sources that have been suggested, which wouldn't surprise me, your best bet may be a personal letter to Air Canada and another as well to whatever headquarters address you can find for Jazz, explaining what you are attempting to do, and asking if they'd be willing to look up the aircraft ID for those flights for you.

For the right person, it's probably about 2 minutes of work total to look them up, although getting the request TO that person may take considerably longer. Many airlines have customer relations departments whose job it is to address whatever issues people write in about, and a pleasant "we flew with you, flight was great, love you guys, silly us, forgot to get the tail #, baby's logbook, dedicated customers, please help, really love you guys, thanks millions..." letter may well get pointed to the right department and get you an answer.

You could also try calling and/or e-mailing; you're actually NOT looking for the standard front-line Reservations agent or "let me help you with your flight" type of person, but rather somebody in the Dispatch or Maintenance records section, as those are the people who have the big database of everything that the airline has ever done. That said, it may be difficult to get past the usual barriers that airlines have in place to keep worried passengers in an airport from trying to talk to dispatchers about "why isn't my flight here yet???" So I'd expect that the pleasant letter to a Customer Relations department may be your best bet.

Ralph J
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