Everybody, both occasional travelers and seasoned frequent fliers alike, notices a flight number at one point or another. Whether they're trying to check the status of their flight or identifying an odd or special sequence of numbers, fliers encounter flight numbers all the time as part of the travel experience. But what goes into the selection of those flight numbers? While the selection is a little bit random, the selection of flight numbers is not a completely arbitrary assignment as some may think. Each airline has its own numbering system, and while some have complex conventions, many have much simpler ideas for how to give flights their numbers.
A large number of airlines follow the traditional standard of eastbound and northbound flights receiving even numbers and westbound and southbound flights receiving odd numbers. Other airlines will have an odd flight number for outbound flights from the hub airport, and the return flight have an even number. In almost all cases, airlines chose to have the flight that returns to the hub airport have the next sequential number that follows the flight number that left the hub airport. If an airport has more than one flight per day, they will often have all flights have sequential flight numbers. Airlines also have a range system in which the range of numbers a flight number can be is determined by where the flight goes or if it is operated by a codeshare partner or regional affiliate. For example, Air Canada has flight numbers 0-99 operate to Asia Pacific, 100-199 is for domestic transcontinental, 200-299 for western domestic and so on.
Airlines will also assign special flight numbers to certain flights. For example, JetBlue's flight from New York to Bogota, Colombia (via Orlando) carries flight 1783 in honor of Simón Bolívar, the leader of Colombia's independence movement. One of Southwest Airlines' flights from San Antonio to Las Vegas flies as flight 711. Air Canada flies flight 88 to Shanghai because the number 8 is considered lucky in Chinese folk culture. While JetBlue and Southwest are the primary users of this method of special flight numbers, all airlines have some sort of special flight within their flight numbers. Almost all airlines operate a flight 1, a flight they operate as their flagship flight. Many international airlines operate their flagship between their home airport and London or New York.
