I’ve written a bajillion times about how stupid direct flights are, whereby airlines market a flight as being “direct,” despite an aircraft change and connecting city. While foreign carriers and Southwest use the concept correctly (by having the same aircraft all the way through), US airlines use it in a very deceiving way.
I’m trying to get home from San Francisco to Tampa today, and am dealing with some serious delays that have me misconnecting. My Dallas to Tampa flight still showed as being on-time, so I decided to pull up the inbound aircraft information on aa.com. The plane is coming from Vancouver and it’s the same flight number all the way through. Cool! Oh wait a second, the flight is 7.5 hours late, and is due into Dallas at 3:30AM.
Believe it or not in my case that would almost be better, given that I’ll misconnect if my Dallas to Tampa flight leaves on-time. But I also have to think of the people that booked Vancouver to Tampa as a single flight number, possibly not even knowing there was an aircraft change. They’ll find themselves in Dallas at 3:30AM without a flight to Tampa.
Yet that doesn’t stop airlines from only issuing miles for the direct distance between the two cities, and limiting upgrades for the entire journey, as shown below:
Right now I have an approximately zero minute connection in Dallas, so wish me luck!
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