UA Flight numbers
 

How exactly are united flights numbered?
this is my understanding
1-99 Flagship routes
100-199 Guam routes
200-799 Domestic Mainline
800-899 Asia routes
900-999 Europe routes
1000-2999 Domestic Mainline
3000-6999 United Express
7000-9999 Codeshares

While generally the system, there are exceptions

Recently flew UA912 ATL-SFO

Not sure what you are considering "flagship"
But I would not consider EWR-MAD UA50 & UA51 as a flagship route

UA120/121 is EWR-BCN, not Guam

Those are a couple of exceptions off the top of my head, I'm sure others can provide more

UA 1/2 and 29/30 are flagships to UA. They serve nonstop SFO-SIN.

Yes there are exceptions to the list

182 does Denver-Frankfurt
143 does Denver-Narita
iirc 2600-2800 does charters or ferry flights but could be wrong on that

Neither am I. Since the nomenclature is borrowed from the Navy, perhaps it’s an aircraft with an admiral aboard?

Generally, CO had the low numbers for international routes while UA had the 800s and 900s. UA had low numbers for domestic routes. UA1/2 was ORD-HNL. Once the two carriers merged, they decided to mix and match...

For me at LAX, UA839 to SYD and UA923 to LHR are historic flight numbers that have not changed in at least the 15 years I have been flying United. LAX-MEL, however, is UA98.

If I recall correctly, a few CO flight numbers were a little "whimsical": flights to PHL often ended in '76' while those to Columbus ended in '92', etc.

Flights going to/from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan will have lots of 8's (rhymes with the word for prospering) and avoids 4's (rhymes with the word for dead).
Naturally, flight 888 serves PEK.
Maybe this pattern holds for Australia, LAX and SFO flights for similar reasons based on related customer make-up?

There's not many row 13's on planes. I'm surprised there's so many rows in the 40's. I will look at the seat maps coming out of China and see how many row 40 seats are not pre-selected...

True! I also recall UA777 from IAD-LAS on PMUA.

UA1122 is the newly launched EWR-CPT route, decidedly not domestic.

They're not numbered strictly in blocks. There's some legacy numbering from both sides roughly following that, but the numbering these days doesn't have any particular meaning.

I think that's the only four-digit transoceanic flight flight number (not counting Hawaii) operated by UA as a scheduled, revenue service.

At this point, the airline is too big, with too much schedule complexity, for strict adherence to a flight numbering convention (e.g., odd for southbound/westbound; even northbound/eastbound) to be a priority.

That said, as noted in this thread, there are some cool historical holdovers... a little continuity and a tip-of-the-hat to a bygone era.

United 1776 is still Houston to Philadelphia (AA's 1776 is Boston to Philadelphia but I digress even more...)

Also CO flight from Houston to Indianapolis was 500 and IIRC also Continental's old #1 was Houston-Honolulu-Guam.

Usually no flight 13 in the USA, and no more 666. Also certain flight numbers get retired such as United 93. Normally east bound are even and west odd right?

UA444 has been one of the LAX-SFO-BOS 'direct' redeye flights since the merger. the LAX-SFO tag using 444 is an on and off thing, but the TCON redeye is always 444.

UA352 is the late IAD-BOS flight.

EWR-HNL had been 50/51 for a while, but now that seems to change on a regular basis. ORD-HNL has been UA219 perhaps since the merger. at one point it was a 'direct' flight from BDL. people always questioned their hearing when the FA announcement in the early morning at BDL stated that this was UA219 "...with continuing service to honolulu."

i know this is trivial (but hey, this is FT after all), but if there is ever a grand renumbering, UA should try to match area codes to flights in the evening bank. it would be nice to leave a meeting in chicago and know that i'm boarding UA860 back home to BDL.

This thread is what I love about FT. Never knew the 1776 PHL flight which is great.

I grew up on UA 1/2 ORD <> HNL and remember being genuinely if not unjustifiably sad when those were changed post-merger.

As noted up thread the LAX <> LHR routes were 10x a year for me when I lived in LA and it was helpful that the flight #s never changed even just for filling out customs form purposes.