I was checking out the info on my upcoming departure and it surprised me to see my two legs are on the same plane - essentially a continuing flight to my final destination.

I've never had that happen before with a major carrier. I remeber it happened a lot with Southwest, and you could just hang out on the plane and thereby get the "good seats" with the cattle call boarding...

But what does UA do in this situation? A Southwest plane is at the airport for an absolute minimum amount of time, so staying on board wasn't a big deal. I remember it being like "if you get off to use the restroom, you might not get back on in time." In comparison, my 'layover' at IAH is 52 minutes. Assuming he plane arrives early (which according to the history it always does) i'd have plenty of time to wander off and come back.

It just strikes me as weird.. I never expected to follow a plane through a hub like IAH. So what's the policy? Am I booted off? Do I get lots of time to be chatty with the FA's?

I'm not sure about UA, but I was on SEA-PHX-ATL on US last month which was the same plane on both legs, and same flight number. We had the option of staying or getting off. We could also leave our carry on in the bins, they needed the floors clear for cleaning.

Those of us that did get off had to wait until boarding to get back on.

Unfortunately, you get booted off...

The other problem with these through flights is their upgrade scheme. There is a glitch in the upgrade process. If you're not upgraded on the first leg of a through flight, you are taken off the upgrade list for the second flight. This affected me from an AUS-DEN-SAN flight a couple of months ago. I was aware it had happened, and mentioned it to the people in the United Club, and a red coat at the gate. A passenger of lesser status was upgraded ahead of me. The United personnel said they were aware of this glitch but powerless to fix it. I never heard back as to why.

UA is doing a lot of continuing flights, some on logical routes and others not, to ration flight numbers. Mainline only has about 1500 flight numbers for 4k flights.

Well, that's just it - it's not the same flight number. It's the same plane though, according to the info.

If it's a different flight number, then you need to get off and reboard.

If you're curious, it's flight 269 and becomes 416 at IAH.

Not sure what the logic is there.

The logic is that a plane that lands eventually takes off again for somewhere. You just happen to align with the city pairs that the plane is planned for.

Makes sense to me.

So, why not just increase the number of flight numbers? Maybe Shares can only handle 1500 flight numbers . Is there some sort of FAA registration they need for additional flight numbers?

They should start rationalizing the flight numbers to follow planes on their routes (eg DEN-MCI-ORD should have one flight number as a direct flight) instead of having "direct" flights for marketing purposes. I'm sure they have a lot of Hub-to-spoke-to-other-hub routes that could be consolidated.

I think we're getting off-topic on this one. The OP's question was about the same plane on two legs, not "direct flights".

It's a parallel topic. To get on my favorite hobby horse, I think USDOT should ban direct flight numbers unless it's the same plane on all legs and one is allowed to remain on the aircraft during any stop. This is well within DOT's purview to ensure clean marketing practices.

Fair enough. I don't think I agree with being allowed to remain - that is just odd, especially if a plane needs to be cleaned.

Same equipment = basically a "buttetproof connection"

I agree with GoAmtrak because most of us come on FT to learn things, and two different planes with the same flight number causing a change of aircraft at connecting airports is b.s., especially when the ticket is sold as a direct flight.

What's the problem with a discussion of getting from point A to point B without needing to take a hike in between?