Maybe most of you will regret the loss of miles compared to a connecting flight, but I will view the use of the same flight number as beneficial under the new award redemption rules. Especially for someone like me who has to connect in ATL CVG or JFK to go somewhere. Since DL now limits the number of flights one can take on an award, I have found myself in situations where I cannot go somewhere because I would exceed the maximum of 4 flights. If there is a single number to do DEN-ATL-XXX, I may be able to go where I want to go by taking that single flight number all the way to XXX. That way, I still have 3 flights to connect to my final destination.