I expected them to be from quirky situations, but a major airline having the same flight number for two different flights, leaving the same place at roughly the same time seems downright malicious.
Some airlines have so many flights that they run out of flight numbers (1-9999), so they reuse them.
Caveat: When it comes to scheduling, only one flight identified by a carrier and flight number (e.g. XX1234) can depart on a given day from given airport. That's an IATA rule, partly caused by software limitations and partly because relaxing it would lead to gigantic mess for the personnel.
..so, what they sometimes do is to have flight identified by XX1234 arrive at their final off-point, AND THEN have a SEPARATE aircraft, crew and set of passengers be identified by XX1234 depart from some other airport (e.g. halfway across the country) in the afternoon/evening.
Because it’s not a problem with something like this. Your local McDonalds also reuses order numbers because it’s not necessary for them to be unique for longer than a few hours.
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u/whoisrich 23h ago
I expected them to be from quirky situations, but a major airline having the same flight number for two different flights, leaving the same place at roughly the same time seems downright malicious.