seattlebruce

I had an interesting experience yesterday on Southwest. I flew WN3125 on the 5th (and final) leg of its DTW-DEN-SFO-LAX-SLC-SEA run. When I saw that the 2nd and 3rd legs were running about 2 hours late, I figured my leg would probably be late too even though southwest.com showed the 4th and 5th legs departing on time. I actually called Southwest but the agent didn't know any more than I did.

Since I was skiing deep powder at Solitude that day, I took a few extra runs, then saw the 4th leg was boarding in LAX -- 2 hours before it would ultimately arrive there. In other words, they substituted a 2nd plane for the LAX-SLC-SEA legs and rerouted anyone who had been planning to connect in LAX. I dashed to the airport just in time to make my flight.

I have seen misconnects like this before where there was a scheduled change of equipment anyway (common on flights with international & domestic legs), but it surprised me that Southwest would do that on one of its many multi-segment domestic routes that of course does not normally change equipment. Yes, I know Southwest reported all along that my flight would be on time, so I was being too clever for my own good by monitoring the earlier segments. And most pax were probably much better off having the 2nd plane put into service. But still, this surprised me, and almost messed up my trip.

cbn42

Direct flight means same flight number, not necessarily same plane. Subtle difference, but can be important.

traveller001

Interesting but I see it as a positive move to improve DOT on-time numbers. Sure beats cancelling one of the legs and flying on to next destination.

As the flight showed on-time any LAX-SLC throughs were probably rebooked prior to departure at origin. Same with LAX outbound connections.

How they managed to get crew and aircraft in LAX I do not know as I don't see any cancels but then again it was Saturday so there may have been a spare aircraft at LAX with the usual reduced Saturday schedule.

Per flightstats.com it appears the LAX-SLC leg of WN3125 actually flew using a WN9007 call sign to prevent duplication.

alggag

On Southwest it generally does mean same plane, or at least they were planning to use the same plane. WN typically only subs another aircraft in the way that the OP describes if the original plane is running behind schedule.

On the other hand, legacies run scheduled "same flight number different plane" direct flights all the time which is something that I personally think is a bit of a shady practice.

lougord99

On WN, same flight number is almost always the same plane. They do not usually do what the legacies do of claiming a direct flight, but actually making it a connection.

NextTrip

Swaps happen!
My son did the exact opposite of OP. He visited here this past Thursday and saw online that his return flight was showing as delayed by a couple of hours. He went to the airport at his originally scheduled time, just in case there was an aircraft swap! Didn't want to miss his flight home.

Texas Booster

There was a scheduled flight from DAL-HOU chg planes HOU-JAX last year.

I flew to HOU, deplaned and got right back on the same plane. Just a change of numbers for the segment that made sense to WN, but not to the B and C pax that thought they could move up front or get window or aisle seats.

flyventure

Subbing out aircraft is being cut down some, but it'll still happen. Typically if you see your portion of the trip marked as ontime but the originator is running 2 hours behind - they are going to sub it. They'll also overfly cities if weather is too bad or stub flights and just get rid of specific segments of it. I've seen them take a flight that would be operating say LAX-PHX-ABQ-MDW and PHX would be messed up, they'll cut out PHX and just go LAX-ABQ-MDW.

expert7700

a few years back I had the option to fly pit-las on a single flight # (same-plane, with a 25min stop in MDW), or a two-flight # trip BUF-MDW-LAS.

I chose to fly BUF-MDW-LAS so that I grab potbelly for dinner

As luck would have it, the PIT flight was delayed and the 25 poor folks who booked a 'direct' flight missed the MDW-LAS continuation portion of their flight.

Rare, but it happens. flight crews were timing out all over the place.

nsx

I have seen a second instance of the same flight number once, also due to a large delay of the initial flight. IIRC this was the last flight of the day.

An employee told me that the second flight is given a 9xxx flight number to distinguish it on the internal systems.

djp98374

I agree with the fist paragraph. Unlike other carriers, southwest doesnt have the traditional route/spoke system where they have a ton of planes to flip around at a hub. If there are significant east coast delays they substitute another plane to do the west coast route of the flight.

I disagree on the second part....I would prefer airlines locked the same number on routes irrelevent of planes they used. It makes it easier to track airline long term behavior of routes.

Southwest is known to regualarly change route numbers which makes it alot much harder to track on time performance stats from year to year.

lougord99

I disagree with you completely. I want to know if I have to transfer planes or my plane will continue to my destination.

alggag

Yeah, I think djp98374 might be referring more to how flight numbers on WN routes tend to change fairly regularly even though the departure and arrival times are roughly the same. I do agree with that point but it's not what I wasn't getting at in my post.

traveller001

ATC actually has issues with the same flight number... for obvious reasons.