A weird thing happened to me when checking in last night (the 13th, which may explain this) for the 10 PM flight to Dublin, then Shannon. It is flight #126. Earlier in the day, I couldn’t check in online, though I’d done so for the same flight at the end of July. Came back as having to do so at the airport.

Got to EWR, and went to check in at the kiosk, with one of the CO folks right by me. My check-in wouldn’t take. We tried to initiate the procedure with my passport, credit card, OnePass card, but after confirming my seat, I’d end up at the beginning page. When the CO check-in person went to a keyboard and console behind the kiosks, he wasn’t able to check me in either.

Turns out that my return flight on the 19th, via Shannon, also is under flight # 126. He called Houston, and it took 15 minutes for everything to get sorted out, because even they weren’t getting permission to check me in to my flight to Dublin because of this.

I have never, in decades of flying, had the same flight number apply to an inbound and outbound flight between the same cities.

My thanks to all the CO folks who got this resolved for me and got me on my flight.

I have no idea why CO126 seems to differ from the Continental pattern for numbering flights. With the exception of CO126, I have noticed that east-bound flights to Europe are even numbers while the return, west-bound flights are odd. CO126 doesn't follow this rule.

I've noticed that airlines sometimes do this when it's a 'triangle' route.

AA will be doing it to Ireland as well, with AA92 becoming ORD-DUB-SNN-ORD, and I believe they do it on a flight to central or south America as well.

Steve

Well, if they’re going to plan it this way, they ought to let you check in to the originating flight without these sort of problems.

I think you should write to the Customer Care department and document your 'troubles' with Flight 126.

As an aircrew who has worked this flight a couple of times this summer, I noticed that people were coming up to the podium frantically asking where Flight 126 to Shannon departed from. The FIDS monitors and the gate podium board showed Flight 126 to Dublin, but did not mention the Shannon leg. If I were a passenger looking for Shannon on the FIDS screens, I wouldn't even think to look down in the 'D's for Dublin (most didn't know their flight to Shannon was a 1-stop through Dublin).

In any event, I submitted an ops report and within a week the problem with the FIDS screens and departure gate boards was fixed. Apparently the round-robin nature of this flight has given the IT folks some challenges and they have to make some interim code changes within the system.

Sounds like your experience is another indication that they still have some tweeking to do. Again, I think you should document it and send it in to the Customer Care folks........ @:-)

RWD

doobierw, can you shed any light on why CO uses this number for all legs of the flight? CO seems to have a very consistent pattern for numbering flights, but CO126 deviates from the pattern: is there a reason why CO does it this way?

Don't know. It's the only flight that I know of that is like this. Generally (as previously noted) westbound flights are odd numbered, and eastbound are even. I don't know this to be a fact, but I believe this to be a holdover from the 'old' days when westbound flights occupied even altitudes, and eastbound flights occupied odd altitudes. Flight numbers were 'inversely' numbered in order to avoid confusion on radio call signs with altitude assignments. Again, I don't know if that's accurate or not, but someone told me that once, and it sounded plausible enough for me to assume that's how things evolved.

Getting back to Flight 126 though.....I've noticed that I have to be very methodical about looking up flight loads and times relating to this flight. You depart EWR for DUB on a Friday the 15th, depart DUB for SNN on Saturday the 16th, and depart SNN for EWR on Sunday the 17th..... If you track this flight on the Internet, there are three possible legs you might be interested in.....

DRW

Thanks for the suggestion. I will do so on my return. Interestingly, I was travelling H class and had been waitlisted for mileage upgrades. As soon as the checkin for the flight to DUB went thru, so did the upgrade on the return, but I wonder if I didn’t get the sole empty BF seat on the flight to DUB before the 24 hour because of the computer glitch.

It seems like the UIO/GYE flight was like this in the past. Now there are nonstops to both destinations.

EWR-SXM-ANU-EWR used to be one flight number all the way until they separated it to non-stops to both destinations.

CO-Mike does the same thing on its GUM-YAP-ROR-GUM flight 955.

I think they do it so they don't have to give FF miles for the back-track part of the flight. If you fly EWR-DUB-SNN you don't get the extra miles between DUB-SNN (122 each way) unless you connect. No change in flight no extra miles.

Also if you take flight 7 IAH-NRT-GUM you get the same miles as CO 1 IAH-GUM or 7447 and you go from a 777 to a 737-800 in NRT but the same flight number.

The games we play for miles.

I don't think that's correct. You can depart EWR-DUB on Fri the 15th and DUB-SNN on Sat the 16th but the DUB-SNN *also* departs Sat the 16th.

The overnight flight is EWR-DUB which arrives ealry in the morning in DUB. Then it continues onto SNN for the EWR-SNN traffic and it arrives there around 11:30am local time. It's then scheduled to leave as SNN-EWR (with connecting traffic doing DUB-EWR) at 1:15pm local time on Sat the 16th as well.

-RM

The reason for why they do this is simple. By using the same flight number, they can market 4 "direct" citypairs with just one plane, one flight:

EWR-DUB
EWR-SNN (1 stop)
DUB-EWR (1 stop)
SNN-EWR

Like others have said, pretty common across the industry to do that.

But I bet they change the crew at some point on CO 126.

Years ago I flew NGO-SPN-GUM (couldn't get an NW WP award morning seat out of NRT, took the 96-min nonstop Nozomi). Different flight numbers, but same plane, same crew, and the funniest part: same announcement protocol, as demonstrated pre-SPN departure ("no laptops til 10kft, we'll let you know") and post-departure 5 min out of SPN ("we're making final approach into Guam, get your customs form ready"). The laptop duration (above 10 kft) was probably 5 min, and when they announced "final approach", Tinian was 3-o'clock on my right, and the plane was still climbing from 8 kft for 12 kft!