xliioper

Direct flight numbers that involve a connection are nothing new and not somehow unique to United. And, yes, all airlines use the point-to-point distance for mileage credit in such cases. I see no direct flights between DEN and SEA through SFO (which would be pretty illogical for a direct flight given that DEN has plenty of non-stop flights to SEA). There is a direct flight between BWI and SFO through DEN (flight 1057) which is far more logical routing to have a direct flight. Looks like you are confused about which flight is actually the direct flight in this case. There's a whopping 2 mile difference between BWI-DEN-SFO and BWI-SFO which is hardly worthy of getting upset about.