Hey all. I haven't flown Continental in awhile (I moved from the Houston area to the Dallas area), but I'm about to fly Continental from IAH to DCA tomorrow. I printed out my boarding pass online, and my question is in the top left hand corner they have a sequence number. I don't think I've ever seen that before (or maybe just don't remember). What, by chance, does that number mean? I know it's probably irrelevant but I'm just curious. Thanks!

You are the xth person to have checked in. Same on all airlines.

SmilingBoy.

Sequence number is also used as a tie-breaker for upgrades if so happens you and another are same elite, fare class, etc.

Otherwise, they'll let you both duke it out on the blue carpet and while doing so close the gate 17 minutes early and have the flight leave....

Yup, many of us have honed our OLCI skills to get the lowest sequence number possible, and set our outlook calendars or alarm clocks to be prepared to hit <enter> just as the 24 hour point is ticking past.

I am surprised nobody came up with an automated way to do OLCI. The analogy is a "sniping" service for eBay ... these services have you enter in all your details in advance, and wait until about 7 seconds before an auction closes, so that if you outbid someone, they won't have an opportunity to increase their bid. I personally think bidders who use sniping services are insuffrable cowards, but it's becoming a widespread tactic.

So what I could see is a similar service that logs you into continental.com 24 hours and 30 seconds before your flight departs, selects "Check-In" and waits 31 seconds before submitting the check-in request, and rapidly clicking through the appropriate screens until you get to a boarding pass, which gets faxed to the number you provided. Voila, you're checked in.

Such an "OLCI-sniping" service would be wonderful, no?

Of course, it wouldn't guarantee being sequence number 1. Someone who has checked in for a connecting flight inbound that connects to the flight for which you want to check-in would have already been assigned a boarding pass hours earlier ...

PS sequence numbers also facilitates quick access to your reservation by GAs and TAs ... if you're sequence number 007, they can simply pull you up as sequence number 7 instead of typing in B-O-N-D, J-A-M-E-S. And so on.

They have, here. I have no idea whether the airlines are unhappy with this kind of thing. I know I wouldn't like to give my personal info to some random company. But I digress...

Thanks, xyzzy ... I wish I patented this idea first :-)

I find that I sometimes get strange sequence numbers if my flight is, for example, a continuation of a flight that originated in Europe. So, if I am checking in for the EWR-SFO portion of CO 41 (which operates FCO-EWR-SFO), I sometimes get a higher-than expected sequence number. Just one for the OP to keep in mind if he/she sees an unexpected number.

So true. I have had numbers in the 400's as a sequence. At first I thought that I might have to sit on the wing.

If they have signs telling you to have your kids check you in, having an automated tool that you set up yourself do it shouldn't bother them too much.

However, I looked at the FAQ, and for paid accounts the tool hits the check-in constantly looking for a better seat for you. That might tick the airlines off enough to ban the site's IPs.

Highest so far I had was 514.

Not only that, but if you're trying to get on a flight as standby or last minute or something, and people misconnect or no-show, it's also possible to get a sequence number higher than the number of seats.

Once one is offloaded from the flight, their sequence number is not reused.

OK, I have to ask the question:
Does any of you actually have a documented instance of scoring a battlefield upgrade based on sequence number? (2 eligible pax with same elite status and same booking class)

I'm sure it's happened, but it just has to be very very rare.

Yes, but that's only because my gf and I travel together, and we have the same status.

Ah, good example!

Did you enjoy Y?

Before they changed the post-EUA upgrade order to be based on fare class I regularly scored "SEQ 1" and got upgraded much more often than others at my elite level. Things changed drastically when they changed the rules. I had no evidence other than empirical evidence, but I'm sure that the sequence number played a big role in many of my upgrades. I think it still helps but to a lesser extent.