There's a photo in that article that shows the problem: the flip-tab sign that has space for four numerical digits. I was thinking they could just switch from 0-9 to 0-9A-Z but that photo showed why that would be a disaster.
Plus any solution has to be approved for use worldwide.
Fortunately the two-digit IATA codes have already switched to 0-9A-Z (e.g. JetBlue is B6) so allowing constrained airlines to use two codes should work fine.
And that's why they should have started thinking about this 20 years ago (or even before that)
Thinking of something like this: every new development and maintenance should be done with 5 digits in mind. While keeping it backwards compatible for 4 digits
This is a problem for people inside those 3 airlines to solve within the constraints that the current living world has imposed on them.
You list listed off the largest airlines on the planet of which pretty much every other airline has to interoperate with. This isn't "AA just has to deal with it", it becomes "This is now everyones problem".
What I am saying is that "the rest of the world" is bigger than AA.
Is codeshare as a "solution" really the best solution or is it just the best solution that also meets the marketing teams requirements?
Do smaller airlines even care for a solution? Wouldn't a global industry wide solution basically be the big 3 bullying the smaller players to spend tons of money so the big 3 can juice their own mindshare?
I don't see why for instance you could do a slow roll out by using only letters for internal flights of countries that are ready for the switch. If you did that at first only for the USA that would probably leave enough room for Delta and the 2 other companies that need them in the short term. And then you upgrade the rest of north america: Mexico + Canada, then you continue the roll out. I am pretty sure all european countries could coordinate to do the switch at a specific date in the future as well.
I guarantee those signs could easily be updated for that. They’re built to allow replacement of each cell and routinely do so since cells break. Switching to 0-9A-Z would take one night for them.
Zero when they're not flipping, and close to zero when they are. Even under direct sunlight, to overcome which LCDs need >100W / square meter.