FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Trying to understand WN flight # patterns
Old Jul 21, 2011 | 8:24 am
  #10  
curbcrusher
 
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Programs: WN CP
Posts: 6,360
I'm right here.

8000-series flights are ferries and charters. 5000-series flights appeared with the 2009 holiday schedule extension as described in the blog post you were looking for, ftnoob:

http://www.blogsouthwest.com/blog/ho...-open-for-sale
For example, up until now, the highest flight number we could use on a normal schedule was Flight Number 3999. By starting from scratch for these three days (in addition to the standard Monday *and* Saturday optimizations), we quickly ran out of flight numbers. So we upped the flight number limit to 5999--which sounds so innocuous, but you'd be amazed how much testing we had to do with dozens of other, internal computer systems to make sure they could handle flight numbers in that range!
4000-series flights were at one point reserved for the ATA codeshare, and I don't know if they've ever been restored for "normal" use.
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