What protocol do Airlines use for assigining a Flight number?

Question

What protocol do Airlines use for assigining a Flight number.
Example: United 93, Continental 1050 etc. etc.

Answer 1

All companies have different systems. Sometimes the first number may represent a country or a continent where the flight is headed to. Then it's just a matter of sequence.

I used to work for a small company that used the following guideline:

A flight number always had three digits. The second and third digit represented the number of the flight in the sequence of flights that day. So the first flight of the day might be number 401, the second flight 802, the third flight 103, and so on.

The first digit represented the type of aircraft and the type of flight. We had three different aircraft types in the fleet.

1, 2 and 3 were for the smallest aircraft type, where 1 represented a local flight, 2 a cross-country flight, and 3 a maintenance flight.

4, 5 and 6 were for a different aircraft type. Again, 4 was a local flight, 5 a cross-country flight, and 6 a maintenance flight.

And the same thing for 7, 8 and 9, for the third aircraft type.

0 was a charter flight.

So for instance, 401 would be the first flight on the schedule, it would be a local flight, on the second aircraft type.

That's just one way to do it, and other companies use other systems.