Originally Posted by
findark
If your flight has a scheduled departure of 22:45 on, say, a Friday then you would start looking around 10pm Pacific on Tuesday night. It's also roughly when the flight becomes available on Flight Status.
The 10pm part is fixed (it's midnight Chicago time), and the calendar day would be the third night (third prior instance of 00:00) before the calendar day of your departure. AFAIK the time is approximate, not 00:00 Chicago on the dot.
Also throwing in a question since I am looking at this wiki now - does anyone know what was intended by "5AB on the Hawaii 772"? No UA 777 has this pair of seats, and I wonder if it was referring to the 77H?
Thank you so much, Findark. Incredibly helpful.