>a flight number seems like an immaterial bookkeeping abstraction
Not when it comes to airline operations. Crews are assigned to flight numbers; changing their assigned flight number, even to the same route/city-pair, constitutes a schedule change, which requires a recalculation of all their duty hours. When operations are all fubar and your crews are out of position you cannot afford to limit your options. Ergo, changing the flight numbers often has knock-on effects related to the crew regulations that are best avoided.
I meant immaterial to the passenger, not immaterial in absoluteness. If the airline changed the flight number but still flew the same passengers to the same destination at the same time, you wouldn't say the flight has gotten canceled, right? I'm saying caring about the flight number is breaking the abstraction relevant to the passenger. The passenger isn't purchasing a flight number; he's purchasing a flight. What matters to the passenger is that the flight happens, not that a flight with a particular number happens.
I capitalized "Airlines" for a reason, but I would guess it's pretty representative for the country. The reason your number and my number are different is not because AA is an unusual airline, but because the two numbers are about completely different things. There are three groups of Americans: (A) those that don't fly in a given year, (B) those that fly once, and (C) those that fly multiple times. Roughly, your number is A/(A+B+C) while mine is B/(B+C).
So this explains why my flight got cancelled and then they put me on an earlier flight… twice! I had to reschedule because it went from a 9am to a 7am flight. Quite the difference.
I will have to check, but I don’t believe that I got a unique phone number in any of those emails.
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