Flight Number Question..
 

Real quick, it's been bothering me for awhile..

Why in the world did UA switch UA908 (ORD-AMS) to UA909 and put UA908 as the return leg? I know there is a lot of messing around with INTL flight numbers lately, but I never quite understood the point of this. Been flying this trip for almost two decades, why the change?

Flight Number Question
 

Sometimes I just have the feeling that they change flight #'s / times by a few minutes, just for the h..l of it.

There may be a very compelling reason, but they defy the usual numbering system, that started with the railways.

Even #'s, were eastbound or southbound

Odd #'s, were westbound, or northbound.

There was a system, but at some point, they decided to just throw it all out. You can see examples in the airline timetables, where a particular flight # has different routes, on different days. Lots of time, there is not a stitch of similiarity to them.

I'm voting for the following reason : just cause they can !

There appears to be NO good reason. It's still a schedule change - why 5 minutes ? Probably a good reason, and don't count on them explaining it, but it's probably slots, gates, crewing, catering, but I'm still voting for "just to drive you crazy".

With the new regime, there is no rhyme or reason with flight numbering. In fact, on some turn legs (XXX-YYY-XXX), both flights have the same flight number, because it's not confusing enough.

I thought it was mentioned sometime back that changing the flight number gives UA the ability to avoid showing poor ontime performance on the flight listing on their website (although probably not in DOT reporting). New flight number permits one to say "no ontime history for this flight."

Yeah, that's my take too.;)

That logic might apply for domestic flight #'s, but UA never shows on-time performance for international flights. No matter how long the # has been constant, there is never any info posted on .bomb

I agree, I should have added the qualifier that this is domestic only.