Delta Duplicate Flight Numbers

In June I booked DL flight 95 JFK-LAS for tomorrow, 8/24.

The other day I logged in to delta.com and found that the flight number is now 427, but the departure time has not changed.

Looking at FlightAware logs, it seems that until 8/1 they had TWO flight 95's: EBL-JFK on a 763, and JFK-LAS on a 752. The flights don't seem to have been connected at all, since they were on different aircraft and the LAS flight departed about 5 hours after the Barcelona flight arrived. As of 8/1 flight 95 is only EBL-JFK. Flight 427 was ONT-ATL on a 752 before 8/1.

I can't remember the last time I've flown on Delta on a flight that had the same number and departure time as the one I booked. This is pretty common with them, I gather.

Song used to use the same flight number to and from

Comair (using DL flight numbers) uses it a lot.
I flew LGA-RIC and my flight number down was the same flt number for the return flight.

CO does the same thing, especially with the express flights. When one is late they usually change the second one to a 7*** flight number instead of 2***.

Its a common practice amoung airlines. If the planes are intersecting through the same air space one will be assigned a letter on the end of the flight number.

You will occasionally see the same flight number used for a round tripper. The flight I generally was taking over the winter up to PVD after work for lunch a few times a week was the same flight number up to PVD than back to LGA on a Saab 340 from Colgan. There are a few others as well I can think of that Chataqua uses the same number in and out. Air Wisky may also do that.

I had it done to me for my trip next week.