Powers of deduction. Southwest doesn't run scheduled service to Lafayette and, last I checked, Southwest uses 8000-series flight numbers for charter operations. Seeing how it's a charter flight number to a city that sees no regular service from Southwest, flying on the day that the team would leave, and it was the only Southwest flight going to LFT that day...I figure that's it. You can learn alot from flight numbers. Each airline has their own way of numbering supplemental flights. I know Delta and Northwest use 9000's for charters. For example, at my airline, we use 1000 series numbers for ferry flights and 9000 series numbers for "extra sections" (flights where we've added an extra flight to a city pair due to an earlier cancellation or possible weight restrictions that would require us to leave passengers and bags behind). 1900-, 3000-, and 4000- series indicate our flights for Delta Air Lines. If you really want to get technical, 1900- series numbers are reserved for east coast flights on CRJ-900 aircraft. 5000- and 6000- series numbers are reserved for our United Airlines flights, and 2500-2800 series numbers are for our Midwest Airlines flights. We don't really do many charters anymore, but I believe we also use 8000 series numbers for those flights. There is a website somewhere out there that lists the week's airline sports charters...kinda find the link though. Airline Geekiness at it's best! Oh...and it looks like our team got the hell outta there after the loss. Southwest Airlines Flight 8234* *(color me impressed that they made it to 40,000 ft. on a 53 minute flight. Guess I'm just used to regional jets.)