Originally Posted by
Fishfreighter
Funny you should say that. I was following a US flight the day they cutover to "Cactus". The controller was having a hard time, calling them "USAir" a couple times and then correcting himself.
"I'm sorry," he said, "I'm having a little trouble with your new callsign."
"That's OK," the US Captain said, "We don't care what you call us as long as we get what we want."
That is a true story.
Amazing. I referred to the "Cactus->US" as the callsign, for us West pilots. The callsign stayed the same for us, nothing changed, as far as callsigns go. I am always struck by the amount of flights from PHX as a whole to Las Vegas. "Southwest 253 cleared to LAS", then a few seconds later "Cactus 50 cleared to LAS"..it never ends.