Originally Posted by
bniu
One thing I'm wondering is why is Flight 1 given to ORD-HNL? What is the prestige in that flight route? It's a 10 hour domestic flight flown on a crappy domestic configured 777. Why not have Flight 1 as one of the JFK-LAX/SFO flights? United 1 could be the early morning JFK-LAX flight and compete with American 1 on that exact same route. Highlight the premium market there? It seems the hawaii routes take up quite a few of the single digit flight numbers...
Well, back in the day, BEFORE UA purchased PA's Pacific Division and BEFORE UA expanded to other international destinations (other than Canada), ORD-HNL was the longest and most premium route in UA's system.
The HNL service was a notch ABOVE the transcon service at the time. The transcon service was Ocean-to-Ocean service. The Hawaii service was branded something like Royal Hawaiian (somebody will correct me here). It was a truly deluxe service at the time.
Hence, the designation UA1/2... And NOW you know the rest of the story!^