Narrative:

Air carrier abcd was at the runway ready for departure. I didn't notice the call sign on the asde-X; or I just thought it was what I was hearing. I have not seen replays to know if it was accurate or not. The supervisor had gotten a call from either the I90 or ZHU to find out what had happened. Evidently he was tagged with one of those facilities as air carrier eabc. I don't know how he was tagged here. Evidently; though according to the supervisor the pilot didn't change his beacon code to the air carrier abcd flight plan and left it as air carrier eabc flight plan as the routing was the same. When they are so similar it is very easy to miss. Everyone here missed it and according to the supervisor it wasn't discovered until 70 miles from the airport. This is an ongoing problem here. I as a matter of fact just filed another report referencing these changing call signs and crews not knowing about it. I think the company needs to take a serious look at its scheduling practices before something catastrophic happens. We know that this is an issue. We should be working better as a team to let everyone around know that this aircraft could be trouble with the call sign just like we do when a pilot seems lost or has a trouble with the language. We should also be passing this information to the TRACON that this pilot may keep calling himself something else or answering incorrectly. If the call sign issue isn't addressed it boils down to teamwork and looking out for one another.

Related reports:

Google
 

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: IAH Controller described a confused call sign event involving similar sounding four digit flight numbers.

Narrative: Air Carrier ABCD was at the runway ready for departure. I didn't notice the call sign on the ASDE-X; or I just thought it was what I was hearing. I have not seen replays to know if it was accurate or not. The supervisor had gotten a call from either the I90 or ZHU to find out what had happened. Evidently he was tagged with one of those facilities as Air Carrier EABC. I don't know how he was tagged here. Evidently; though according to the supervisor the pilot didn't change his beacon code to the Air Carrier ABCD flight plan and left it as Air Carrier EABC flight plan as the routing was the same. When they are so similar it is very easy to miss. Everyone here missed it and according to the supervisor it wasn't discovered until 70 miles from the airport. This is an ongoing problem here. I as a matter of fact just filed another report referencing these changing call signs and crews not knowing about it. I think the company needs to take a serious look at its scheduling practices before something catastrophic happens. We know that this is an issue. We should be working better as a team to let everyone around know that this aircraft could be trouble with the call sign just like we do when a pilot seems lost or has a trouble with the language. We should also be passing this information to the TRACON that this pilot may keep calling himself something else or answering incorrectly. If the call sign issue isn't addressed it boils down to teamwork and looking out for one another.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.