What's In a (Tail) Number?

If you speak Spanish, or any number of other languages, you may know that the English "my name is X" doesn't always directly translate.  Those languages say "I call myself X," and while the difference is subtle it really affects the way you think about your moniker.  The English is passive; we call our first names "given" and our last names "family," meaning we have little to do with the naming.  The Spanish is active; I call myself something every day, and others share in that activity with me.

"Lincoln ground, Cherokee 8619E."

I'll never forget the first time I said that sentence.  I had a new label, but it was more than that.  It was a new way of calling myself - a new way to tell others who and what I was, but also to tell myself.  It was like the first time a coach called my by my last name when I started playing football or the first time I called myself by my job title, but it didn't just add to my name.  It replaced it.

Harrison Ford talks about this anonymity in the "Just Another Pilot" video I recently wrote about.  He talks about the release he feels knowing he's identified as the pilot of a Beaver rather than a Millennium Falcon, and it frees him to experience the world in a completely different way.  While not all of us need to escape our celebrity status to relax, I think most of us do take some solace in hiding behind the microphone.

Michael Jordan: #23, 6 NBA Championship Rings.

Of course, you can always customize your N-number (within some pretty specific FAR limits) if you'd rather broadcast your identity to the world.  Actually, at $10, it's a better deal than the vanity plates in my home state.  Passengers out there, have you ever wondered why so you hear so many "November"s over the radio on cross-country trips?* ID numbers on every plane registered in the US must begin with "N" by law - every from Guernsey to South Africa has a similar international identifier.  There are plenty of vanities already registered (N1KE, N32MJ, and N236MJ, among others) so jump on it if you're too good for Harrison Ford.

Since 99% of us aren't too good for Harrison Ford, we'll continue to experience the thrill of learning new ways to call ourselves every time we hop behind a new yoke.  Language is strongly linked to memory, and self-recognition to autobiographical memory in particular.  To come full circle, these letters and numbers we use to steer clear of traffic in the sky become a deeply integrated part of how we perceive ourselves as pilots.  A passenger once told me that she had trouble picking out our call sign among all the ATC jargon in the sky, and I realized that what sounded to her like gibberish has begun to sound to me like poetry.

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*A recent passenger, who shall remain anonymous, actually asked this on my last trip.