Well, I hope they keep assigning non-sensical city pairs the same flight number.

It really, really blows goat when you fly DCA-CLT-ATL and get only 547 miles because you have a continuing flight with the same number whereas you would get 1,000 miles for flying DCA-CLT and CLT-ATL with two different flights with different flight numbers.

And to add insult to injury, there is often a "change of plane".