Hi!

I’m primarily a BA flyer based in London, but I’m heading Stateside in 2 weeks, and have quite a few domestic flights on AA lined up. Putting all my flights into my diary, I thought I’d made a massive booking error. At the end of August, both my DFW-ICT and ICT-DFW a few days later had the same flight number, AA 2407. How was that possible? Had I booked the same flight twice? After a bit of a panic, double checking all my reservations, I worked out that the same aircraft goes DFW-ICT-DFW with a single flight number. Doesn’t having AA 2407 with an identical departure and origin city cause any issues? I can see why a multi-sector flight would have the same number, but not a “there-and-back”.

To further confuse things, if you booked AA 2407 for today, you’ll be flying DFW-BOS! Why the need to change flight numbers? I recall flying BA 727 many, many years ago back from Geneva on a ski trip (I’m sure you can guess why that flight number stuck in my head!). I just put that into Google, and BA 727 is still a midday GVA-LHR flight.

Finally, why do flights on the same route have such radically different flight numbers? On BA, you generally have consecutively numbered flights (e.g. LHR-LYS has three daily flights, BA 360, BA 362 & BA 364), or at least stay within a fairly small range. On the day I’m flying ORD-MSP, in time order, the flights are AA 1405, 2455, 1409, 47, 1559, 2185, 4713. I mean, where is the logic?

So, this isn’t a griping post, i'm just wondering if anyone can explain how the numbers came about!

Thanks