I’ve noticed a few controversial and/or political callsigns floating around multiplayer recently. Most of them relate to the current Israel - Hamas conflict and the 2020/2024 US Election, mostly regarding Trump or Biden. There is obviously something to be said for free speech, but when does it go too far? Does IF set any limitations on what a callsign can be? Could someone set anything as their callsign without issue?
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as IFATC, there’s a report for ‘offensive/inappropriate callsigns.’ have i ever used it? no. can i speak for everyone else and say they probably rarely to never use it? yeah probably.
im curious as to what these callsigns can possibly be… can you give an instance? if these are callsigns that IF have, based off real life callsigns then no, i really dont see the problem here.
if these are callsigns personalized by someone then it should only be a problem if its attacking someone or their belief. if its ‘political’, and someone finds a problem then they need to find better things to do tbh cause that likely means they dont side with the ‘politics’ being displayed as the callsign, though im still confused as to how someone can have a political callsign.
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“F-TRMP” is possible…
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I’ve seen F-JOEB…
I don’t get why people have to bring politics into literally everything, let alone a flight sim.
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i’d say these are more offensive than anything
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The best thing you can do if you see something that offends you is ignore it and move on. As Morgan freeman said when asked how would you stop racism? He said " You stop talking about it. "
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I thought we couldn’t create custom call signs anymore? Was it recently added back or am I just being delusional?
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We’ve also had F-PUTN on there
No we can’t - but people do still get creative with the general aviation prefixes.
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Nothing explicitly offensive here… My personal callsign is F-MATH, does that mean I’m insulting myself, absolutely not.
Offensive/inappropriate callsign is anything explicitly insulting, sexual, discriminatory… etc.
B-TCH is inappropriate
D-RUNK is not
G-MILF is inappropriate
Cactus 1549 is not
G-ANJA (weed) is inappropriate
Air France 666 is not
I used real examples from IFATC controller reports
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It’s interesting that you now touch on this, because there has actually been more debate on this with controllers recently. Ultimately, because of the nature of offensive (causing someone to feel deeply hurt), if we punish things that offend us but not others, it will create an unfair balance for those offenders. Therefore, we are instructed as @Mathurin_Garcier said: to report explicitly derogatory, sexist, racist, etc. callsigns.
Cuz let’s be honest, maybe someone’s name is F-U. 🤷
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Exactly. Just because someone is offended doesn’t mean they are right. So I’d say sticking to callsigns that are
Is a good practice ;)
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i was comparing it to being political. saying ‘F’ anyone would be more offensive than political in any world. but you’d be delusional if you said its not at all offensive.
well….why would you? i dont see how thats related given that you’re not a political figure, hated by half the world… clearly including some pilots on IF.
like stated here. im definitely not offended, i could care less. but for the sake of responding to Mort, then yeah those callsigns would be worth reporting to some.
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Inappropriate call signs can be reported by IFATC.
However, there is a misc message you can issue as a warning “Please change your callsign…”
I’ve only had to use it a couple times for inappropriate/offensive call signs related to the Israel - Hamas conflict. Pilots involved promptly changed their callsign.
As to what’s considered offensive or goes too far – that’s a judgement call but the misc message to change call signs does work.
I’m curious, who actually gets offended from The Miracle on the Hudson I mean nobody died and Sully and Jeff did an amazing job
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This is an example that came up amongst IFATC controllers, after checking something like Malaysia 370 isn’t inappropriate either.
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So call signs for tragic flights aren’t in appropriate?
Yeah, that was me 😅
They did do an amazing job: I wasn’t really offended just wanted to make sure it followed regulations :)
Correct, at least from past occurrences.
I see MH370 all the time when controlling at EGLL - it’s usually doing local flights between STN-LHR, hiding in plain sight ;)