BOE1 is now a 738? (737-800)

I don’t know if this is a bug or the plane got re-designated, but I had been tracking BOE1 (the 1st 787-800) since December.
Now it’s showing as a 738? What going on?

Boeing call signs are not static. They can be applied to any flight.

They are most likely assigned to the PIC not the airplane.

I thought that might be the case too, but BOE1 the next day was back to being a B788 so I don’t know how the PIC got from SEA to ROW that quickly.

That was just an educated guess on my part. When the Lear 60 was new I went through Flight Safety before they had their simulator. Our call signs were assigned to the instructor.

BOE001 on Sep 3 was A6-FDJ (N6046P) on a round robin test flight. The BOE # comes from the block identifier specific to every Boeing airframe. In this case A6-FDJ = YR001 (the first 737 with the new Sky interior, hence the start of a new range of numbers). The 787 is ZA001.

When the 787 is flying the 737 will probably use the last 3 of its line number for identity, ie. BOE356, if it is planned to fly on the same day.